The Exodus Sagas: Book IV - Of Moons and Myth

by Jason R Jones

  “Do you see what I see, my bearded friend?” Shinayne whispered.

  “Aye. I see a city, mountains at its south side, road leads up to doors in the mountains. Ye think this is it?” Zen was cold, nervous, trying not to stare at the orange mist far ahead or the strange movement the whole ruins seemed to have.

  “I believe we just found Mooncrest, my friend.”

  “What is left of it ye’ mean.”

  “Still, this must be it.”

  “I’ll believe it when we reach the doors to Kakisteele. Tis pretty big though, even with the little we can see now.”

  “Do you notice the buildings, the statues, the mist, see anything strange?”

  “Aye, be all dark save for silent lightning with no thunder and some orange stuff writhin’ about inside the ruins.”

  “Agreed. But I was speaking more of the way it moves, like the mist is chasing the shadows, something is unnaturally conscious here, something unseen watches us.” Shinayne looked, a mile ahead with the flashing of a silent storm, and peered across the ruined metropolis.

  “Ye’ mean less natural than the giant trench surrounding a millennia old ruin with an orange cloud that moves along the ground by itself?”

  Shinayne’s stare and raised eyebrow in silence let him know she was aware of his sarcasm.

  “Closer look then?”

  Come closer…

  “Ahh, ye’ shut up stupid spirits. Little bit further elf?”

  “This is insane, you realize that, right? We should head back.”

  “That be a yes if ever I heard one.” Zen began down the slick hill, water dripping out of his black braided beard. He stared at the orange mist, somewhat entranced and curious.

  Step by step, down the two went into the lowlands. Dark yellow jags and peaks appeared far to the south with the flashes of lightning, old foundations in the earth held nothing but memory, and only muffled whispers and rain in the night made noise. They stopped, the city ruins and orange mist still a half mile ahead. Shinayne and Zen looked down into the trench only inches in front of their feet. It was deep, thirty feet or more, and miles long and curved in each direction. They looked across, it was a fifty or more feet to the other side. Splashing and sloshing of water could be heard below them, something was moving in the enormous ditch. Many things.

  “By Vundren, what coulda’ made such a trench? Looks recent too, I don’t understand it.” Zen reached his hand over the edge a bit and felt the loose soil and wet rock.

  “Nevermind what made it, what is it that is moving down in there?” Shinayne tried to see in the dark, it was too far.

  Nevermind…

  “Those voices are getting closer now, perhaps it is time you shed some light on the area, they know we are here anyway.” Shinayne wiped the rain from her face and looked to Zen.

  “Ye’ sure? Once I do that, everything from here to the mountains is gonna see us.” He held his hammer and moons symbol that hung from the chain on his neck.

  “You wanted to come here and see, now we are here. Unless you are afraid.”

  “Baah, don’t try that on me elf. Vundren eth edrith vun vast.” Zen spoke the prayer and channeled yellow light around his warhammer. The area glowed for fifty feet or more in every direction.

  “Oh by Siril!” Shinayne gasped as she pulled Zen back away from the ravine fast.

  Hundreds, thousands there were, a ravine filled with skeletons trying to climb up the muddy embankment, brown water up to their knees. None had flesh nor clothing, not even a shroud, just mud covered remains that moved. White bones, all moist from rain, that were crawling over each other in a feeble attempt to make it up and out. There were no voices, no noise but the clacking of jaws and bone, and the sloshing of uncountable bones that moved and stared with a trickle of deep shadow from within their skulls. They pleaded without expression, to the mortals that stood on solid ground above, seemingly asking assistance with reaches and outstretched dead hands. They would glare with their flickering black sockets, then fall as the ones from behind piled over them, then they too would fall and struggle helplessly. Then more and more, like an endless wave of dead that fought itself, trying to emerge and converge where the glow was coming from, as if they had not seen the shine of light in thousands of years.

  “By all that is holy on the mountain of God, what is this?” Zen backed up with Shinayne, realizing the skeletons could not and would not reach him, yet the sight was unnerving and forcing him back. He looked to how far the ravine curved to his left and right in the darkness, assuming it stopped at the base of the Kaki Mountains. It was a few miles in each direction he surmised. “Must be hundreds o’ thousands o’ the dead here in this trench. Vundren have mercy, why are they still movin’?”

  “The orange mist is heading this way, look.” Shinayne pointed into the ruined city, closer now, she could make out taller buildings, a tower, and even part of a wall that still stood in the vast metropolis of what must have once been Mooncrest.

  The mist was not more than three feet off the ground, its orange glow barely illuminated anything, and it was as silent as the ruins it traversed. Twisting and turning like a serpent through ruined homes and forgotten structures, it was at least a mile long and moving right toward the light, right for Zen and Shinayne.

  This way, look…

  Every step they took back was instinct, and every few feet away they went, the orange mist gained fifty. It was entrancing to watch, perhaps they did not notice how close it had gotten, or how loud the whispers had become, but both the elf and the dwarf watched as the mist dove into the ravine, and then they covered their ears as hundreds of ghastly screams tore into the air with a flash of orange light. Suddenly the screams stopped, and boney hands reached over the edge of the now glowing ravine. Hundreds, eyes glowing with orange fire bright, shambling to solid ground with some renewed awareness that seemed to guide them. More continued to reach to edge, their bones slowly covering with gray ghastly flesh as they climbed to their feet, lifted by some unseen force of intellect. First the dead skin grew on the skulls, then worked its way down the vertebrae and ribs, then the thin gray membrane stretched over their appendages down to the tips of fingers and toes once only bone.

  All at once the orange mist vanished, even from the hundreds of eye sockets that held wicked remnants inside of their skulls. The thousands continued to scramble for the top of the ravine they could not reach, the sloshing of water the only audible reminder. The hundred or more turned, all of them, and glared with undead emptiness in their gaze. Only one still held the orange glow in its eyes, and now the voices seemed to emnate from it.

  All that trespass must stay…

  The dead walked slowly toward the elven woman and the dwarven man with the light glowing from his hammer. It spoke what the mist told it to as the flesh began harden, strengthen, and their former garb and armor began to take unearthly shape upon their bodies.

  “I think it is time to leave.” Shinayne drew Carice and Elicras out of their sheaths, backing up slowly. The dead did not move toward her, just stared, only their heads turned to follow she and Zen.

  “Aye, no further argument here.” Zen backed up with the elven swordswoman, pointing his warhammer and the light emitting from it toward the horde of ghostly dead soldiers that were reforming somehow. They shielded their eyes as he waved the light across their faces from thirty feet away.

  “Take them.” The banshee taking solid form with orange fire in his eyesockets drew a scimitar and pointed to the mortals before him.

  “Run!” Shinayne grabbed Zen by the shield arm, turned him around and ran toward the hill with the old outpost. Only a few paces ahead, she saw that the dead had flanked them, quietly, and were moving to surround them and the hill they were heading for. Desperately trying to make the next few hundred yards, she could now hear the stomping of feet all around her.

  As they ran, so did the ghosts of the dead, now looking much like the gray soldiers Zen had seen at the haunted pub in
Estivar. He saw weapons now, shields of gray, and the orange glow from their speaker lit the darkness as much as his holy light from Vundren. The dead began to make noise as they chased, slowly taking some semblance of form and mass in their gray afterlife.

  “How did they get there already, elf? Ye’ supposed to sense that stuff ye’ know!” Azenairk huffed as he pumped his stocky legs as fast as they would run. He looked left, maybe fifty ahead and closing. Right, same yet more and closer, they were already at the base of the hill. Shinayne was pulling and running so fast he nearly tripped over his own legs. He looked behind, they were not twenty feet away and gaining.

  Up the hill she scrambled, half dragging Zen to make it up before the dead caught him. Past the pillars she ran, then she stopped, she saw them. Gray soldiers drawing steel blades, all around the hill, already in every direction. Shinayne could not sense them, not here, not one of them. They were surrounded by hundreds now, silent and not twenty feet down the hill, climbing fast.

  “Time to stand and fight. I told you this was a bad idea.”

  “How many ye’ think?” Zen was huffing for breath, but swung the warhammer twice in the air, readied himself and his shield, back to back with Shinayne.

  “Two hundred perhaps, stay close to me.” She took a low stance inbetween the crumbled and worn pillars. Her right hand back and longblade crossing her chest, left hand out halfway with the shorblade on point.

  “Feast upon them!” The dead warrior with the orange glow pointed his blade, and the hundreds of long dead gray soldiers swarmed the hilltop at his command.

  “Vund erstal var ith darmanvun!” Zen twirled the glowing hammer and smashed it into the stone pillar in front of him. The rock shattered, then the base split, and lastly a golden glow erupted and split down the hill farther than he could see. The chasm it caused filled with rubble, making the south side an impossible climb and claiming dozens of the dead as it happened.

  The first wave of the reborn dead from ages past staggered to the top and felt the enchanted steel of Shinayne’s whitemoon blades plunge into their cursed remains. Carice slashed through false steel shields and blades as Elicras followed with rapid stabs past ghostly flesh in the shadows. Her ancient weapons cut through the undead as if they were made of water. Four, then ten, then fifteen burst into dust and screams, all but the skulls disintegrating as she sliced like a desperate whirlwind on top of the forgotten hill. Only a faint echo of steel sung in the night as the elven swordswoman stepped, attacked, ducked, countered, and held the northern edge of the ruined outpost. Lifeless skulls and dust were piling at her feet, but there was no end to the horde in sight.

  Azenairk ducked a blade, returned with the hammer, and thudded another ghastly soldier to the ground. His light seemed to hurt them more than his blows were, yet he stomped the skull anyway and watched the body and visage of flesh and armor burst into dust and fade away. His shield was blocking and pushing back to his left, his divinely lit warhammer swinging wildly to his right, and his back was never more than a foot from Shinayne. He thought of the others, realizing they were a mile or more away, and how foolish it had been to travel these lands at night.

  “Still alive back there?” Shinayne feinted to back up, bumped her rear into Zens, then slashed in wide arcs into the much slower risen soldiers. Three fell on her left, five on her right, and she never slowed her parries nor lowered her guard.

  “Aye, not… for long. Tired…too.. many…killed ten now…you?” Zen was grunting, struggling against five of the horde pushing on his shield while he ducked and swung with his hammer to those shielding their undead eyes from his light.

  “Holding. Too many to… count at my… feet, maybe…sixty.” She was calm on the outside, but all she could think of was survival, that Zen had not worn his armor, and that they would not last another thirty seconds unless something happened. Shinayne kept up her inhuman flurry of attacks yet noticed the one orange glow of eyes getting closer as the horde of dead continued. She pondered, inbetween sure sword cuts and parries against ghostly steel.

  “Wha…sixty? Baah…ye’ be… stretchin…” The last Thalanaxe turned after shoving the mass of undead that pressed him. His jaw fell open and his eyes bulged with awe as he realized his partner was not exaggerating, there was a pile of uncountable skulls at her feet, some rolling back down the hill in a second death. “How by Mount Maonell?”

  “I need you to… handle them alone, for… just a moment.” Shinayne, spun full circle, parrying and disarming seven ghost blades with her shortsword, then cutting through all seven undead wielders with her longblade. Seven skulls hit the ground as dust and ash erupted, yet nine more came to take their brethrens’ place.

  “Ye’ insane?” Azenairk looked around quick. Twenty or more to his left, twice that to his right, both sides pushing past old pillars and stone to reach them. The southern chasm he had caused was impassable, yet behind him to the north there were a hundred massed to kill the elven woman. They rushed, slipped on the wet grass, yet the mob of remnants was unstoppable

  “Ready?” Shinayne backed up to a stump of pillar, leapt ontop of it, jumped to a higher part of the old outpost foundation. It cracked a little below her feet, the dead swarmed, and she leapt into the air again. This time, right into the middle of the horde.

  “Shinayne! No!” Zen yelled as she leapt from sight into the night, lost in the middle of hundreds of reformed dead soldiers. Surrounded, the dwarven priest swung his warhammer and family shield like mad. “Ahh! Hah! Die again ye’ devils!”

  Two cuts caught her legs, another her elbow, then three more across her back as she landed from her airborn somersault into the unending mass of spectral blades. Slashing right, two fell, then left with her off hand, and two more went down as her ancient swords cut through weak dead flesh at the neck. She parried twice, then ducked another onslaught, and dove ahead into another roll. Her elven speed and the obscuring dust of the fallen hid her movements well. She rose with her blades cleaving wide, dropping five more into their silent eternity. Shinayne stood face to face with the orange glowing eyes of the banshee.

  His back was against a pillar, Zen smashed another skull and raised his shield to block the ashen eruption. His light radiated across their expressionless faces which raised their small shields again, then his hammer took its toll in that moment. He had nowhere to go, surrounded on three sides, then his shoulder was pierced, then the other, cold steel that cut and froze the wound. Zens ear was nicked, then his cheek, there were too many.

  “Devour her!” The dead soldier with the orange glow of mist in his sockets shouted, the only one that seemed to be able to speak, and his sword thrust forward at the elven woman.

  Just as the scimitar drove ahead, two elven blades crossed over it. The steel was stronger that the other weapons of the dead and it screeched upon contact with her mated blades. In one quick motion, too fast for human eyes, her shortblade struck down twice, then her longblade swung up and knocked the scimitar high. Just as Elicras struck the scimitar loose with a third cut, Shinayne stepped forward quick and Carice slashed clean through the neck. Silence screamed as the lightning flashed. The skull hit the ground and Shinayne closed her eyes.

  Twelve swords from dead hands cut, slashed, and lunged for her from every side. Just as she knew that she was dead, she was covered in ash and dust. Shinayne looked to the skull at her feet, the orange light flickered out, and the screaming mist shot back toward the ravine as hundreds of skulls hit the ground that very second. All of them.

  “And that!, Ye’ demons! Ahh, hah! Oh aye!?, Ye’ too then, Aaarrrghhh!” His eyes were closed, wounds stinging from nicks and cuts galore, swinging in rage and desperation. Zen was hitting nothing but falling dust, yet he dared not stop.

  “Azenairk, it is over.” Shinayne sighed out loud, feeling the blood trickle through her chain links in many a place. She took a knee at the base of the hill, caught her breath, and looked to the cloud of dust and spread of skulls in the silent night.
<
br />   “Ain’t never over! Keep fightin’ now! I’ll save ye’ Shinayne! Aaargghh! I’m comin’!” His warhammer and shield caught more air, more dust, and he fell forward onto a knee after tripping on a skull.

  “They are gone, priest. I took the leaders head, they vanished. Stop swinging.” She waited for him to open his eyes. As she shook her head, the orange light flared in the ravine a mile south. The same screams, the same moans on the wind that was not there, and then she saw them, again. Ten sets of orange glowing eyes shone in the blanket of midnight, and thousands of skeletons crawled up the ravine with them.

  How dare you…

  Shinayne shuddered, the whispers were now the cacophony of thousands in dreadful hollow anger. She saw the glow from the ravine flare, casting the reforming skeletons in orange light, their shadows elongating across the broken field below the hill. The elf blinked, a tap on her shoulder from the very quiet dwarf at her side broke her awe.

  “How did ye’ know that killin’ the one with the fiery eyes would stop the rest of em’?”

  “I did not know.”

  “Are ye’ mad? We should be dead.”

  “I had a hunch, a feeling is all.” Shinayne still stared, the gray glow of flesh from the netherworlds taking form over innumerable skeletal remains far to the south.

  “Ye’ are insane then. Brave, deadly, but insane. Ye’ dove into em’ on a hunch? We coulda’ been killed, elf.” Zen gulped, now staring south at the thousands of forgotten corpses taking unearthly form atop the glowing ravine.

  “It worked, and we are alive. Had I not done something, we would not be talking now.” She sheathed her blades, felt the cold lacerations on her arm and legs, eyes never leaving the sight to the south. The orange mist vanished once more, the screams erupted from the ruins, and faint footsteps of a far off army of the dead could be heard through the pattering rains. This time, much louder than before, many more steps sounded as the thunder the nighttime storm was without.