Oblivion: Part Five of the Redemption Cycle

by J. R. Lawrence

  “I know you,” said Vexor at last, his words cold in the dark passageway.

  “And I don’t know,” replied Minarch, his voice sounding distant, as if echoing out of the corridor before them. “Isn’t it odd that we hate one another, and yet we don’t fully understand where we’ve come from? What we’ve done to end up here? After all, what evidence have we to put blame on one another for our actions?”

  “But I know who you are, follower of the Shadow Queen,” Vexor said, gripping his dagger tighter in his freezing fingers. “You killed my crew, the people who were all that I had. And you tried to kill my friends today. Who knows what other horrors you have brought to pass in this land...”

  “Yes, who knows?” said Minarch, and he breathed a heavy sigh. “I once had a home. But like you it was taken from me, like you I was forced to fight in a war I hoped to perish in. So please, if you will be so kind, finish what you came here for... Run your knife through my heart. Stop it. Stop this madness. Maybe then I’ll see their faces again.”

  Vexor didn’t move. His hold on his dagger lessoned, and as he looked down on the ranger he began to feel pity for him. The fool is right, he thought, I don’t know who he is. I don’t have any claim on his life. Who am I, a being of this world who had acted in like manor of this man, to put any blade to his throat?

  After a moment of thought, Vexor spoke. “I don’t want to kill you, or anyone for that matter, I never did, and yet I played a role in the death of hundreds of the children of this world. Perhaps we have traveled on similar roads. But I offer you a deal... Put your past behind you, come with me and my friends and help put and end to the evil that has haunted your life.”

  “And if I do not accept your offer?”

  “Your fate is yours to decide,” replied Vexor, and he put his dagger into his belt.

  “Very well,” said the dark ranger, and he looked up at Vexor with green eyes that shone in the darkness of the passage. “But unfortunately for us both, I am the past.”

  Even as he spoke the last word, Minarch black bow disappeared as surely as a shadow is chased by a lit match, and Vexor Hulmir stood alone in the passageway. Wherever he went, to whatever company he returned to, he would never know.

  “May peace go with you,” Vexor said, and sat on the bottom step to nurse his wounds.

  *****

  The corridors were emptied as Duoreod and Neth’tek made their way into the higher levels of Grindle, slaying whatever monster lurked in their path. But for the most part, it seemed abandoned, almost as if they had been drawn out by whatever power commanded their presence their, most certainly the work of the Shadow Queen. They entered one particular passageway that forked in two opposite directions, strips of fur blankets and rusty weapons lying scattered across the floor.

  “Whatever was here obviously left in a hurry,” said Duoreod as he stepped across the passage, lifting a piece of fur from the floor with the tip of his scimitar.

  Neth’tek walked passed him, heading to the end of the tunnel. “We have to keep moving,” he said to Duoreod.

  Duoreod, however, turned and looked in the opposite direction. “How do we know which way to go?” he asked. “This place is almost like a enormous maze of corridors and passages, all branching off and going this way and that.”

  As soon as he finished speaking, they heard a muffled cry echo out of the passage ahead of Duoreod. Neth’tek spun round, his swords coming up as he ran ahead of the king and to the end of the passage, recognizing the sound of the voice that cried from the darkness.

  But it couldn’t be, he thought as he turned the corner at the end of it, Duoreod following behind him. They stepped out onto an open platform, the dark clouds raining water upon their heads, and a far drop extending down into the mountain pass below, shrouded in mist, even the courtyard where they had left their friends.

  He stopped in the middle of his tracks, frozen by the image before him. It was Helen, her hands and ankles fastened by ropes, and her mouth wrapped by a filthy rag. Without having to see who had done it, Neth’tek felt the burn of anger as he saw her fear and pain, and could almost feel the presence of the demon in the chamber.

  “Neth’tek, no!” screamed Ezila’s voice in his head.

  It blindsided them almost completely, slamming into both him and Duoreod, and they were thrown toward the edge of the cliff. They fell just short of its lip, however, and lay just inches from the edge. Gorroth’s claws and fangs dug into Ezila’s flesh as she appeared above Neth’tek, and her pained scream was an awful thing to hear. It seemed to split Neth’tek’s head in two, the voice that had so often spoken peaceful things to The Fallen in times of great need.

  He rolled over onto his back, groaning as blood began to leak from the gash on his forehead. To the side he saw a mixture of brown and green crash to the ground, Ezila’s form lying motionless as the wolfish demon rose onto its hind legs. It turned toward Neth’tek, its yellow eyes piercing as it snarled, and stalked toward him.

  Every part of his body felt bruised and broken, but Neth’tek climbed to his feet anyway. He leveled his scimitars toward the demon as it came upon him.

  He waited until Gorroth stepped inside the range of his swords, and then lunged forward with a defiant cry. However, Gorroth sidestepped, dodging the attack, and swept one forearm out to catch Neth’tek on the jaw. Claws ripped fine lines of blood on the side of his face, and the force of the blow threw him backward on his heels.

  He slipped over Duoreod and fell onto his back. Something slammed into his wrist, and he felt his sword rip free of his weak fingers. A glint of silver to the side caught his eye, and glancing in that direction he saw his prized scimitar flip once through the air before plummeting downward and disappear over the edge of the platform.

  Gorroth took Neth’tek by the throat and lifted him from the ground, his claws barely breaking the skin of his neck and drawing faint drops of blood. Neth’tek tried to stab at the demon with his last scimitar, but Gorroth slapped it from his grasp with its free hand.

  “Despicable Fallen,” Gorroth remarked with a mocking tone to his growling voice, his maw twisting into an evil grin as he looked into Neth’tek pained eyes, “did you really believe you could challenge the might of the Shadow Queen and The Watcher all alone and so unprepared? Could you have believed such a lie as that? If so, you are no better than the rest of your kin!”

  Neth’tek choked under the monsters hold, grabbing the beast by the wrist to keep the pressure of gravity off his neck. “Me... and my friends...”

  “You and your friends are dead!” Gorroth roared, and he slammed Neth’tek down into the stone floor. One clawed hand punched his ribs once, twice, three times before he was lifted up and hurled across the platform to collide with a rock wall.

  Neth’tek’s head banged against the face of the wall, throwing the world out from under him, and he slumped down in a helpless heap under its shadow. Several ribs were undoubtedly broken, he could feel the stinging pain just beyond the veil of dizziness that overcame him.

  A deep shadow fell over him, like a cloud passing over the already covered sun, and looking up with half opened eyes he saw Gorroth looming above him. Those yellow eyes blazed in that shadowed face.

  It bent down and again grabbed Neth’tek by the throat, hoisting him off the ground so that his toes dangled just inches from the stones. “You are a pathetic creature of darkness, Fallen. The only thing you were destined for is to die in a dark hole deep in the shadows, alone and forgotten by all who had claimed to be your friends and your family. You have none of such things! You will die here, at the footsteps of your supposed victory, with nothing achieved but the deaths of thousands of innocent lives. It need not have happened! They could have lived! You could have lived had you been wise and accepted the offer of the Shadow Queen...”

  “You... and your queen...” Neth’tek struggled to speak, the world spinning round and round in front of him, even Gorroth’s wolfish features spinning. He could feel its hot bre
ath on his face, could smell the scent of death and torture. Was that blood that he tasted in his mouth?

  Neth’tek swallowed under the monsters hold. “You don’t have to do this, Gorroth,” he managed to whisper. “These things... that you claim are justice... this world... that you say is... damned... There... will always be... hope for them...”

  Gorroth’s clench on his neck tightened, its features twisting into an anger stricken expression. “Hope died a thousand years ago!” he bellowed, raising Neth’tek higher into the air as if he were to toss him again. “We are all damned creatures! There is no hope for redemption, for salvation or sanity!”

  “You’re... wrong!” Neth’tek choked, “There is...”

  “Shut up!” Gorroth roared, and he threw Neth’tek onto the ground. “Enough lies, I have heard enough!”

  Gorroth raised his clawed hand, about to drive it into Neth’tek’s heart, when Ezila’s blade swept up and cut the arm of the demon. She spun in front of Neth’tek, dropping low and sweeping her slender blade back and forth at the monster, driving it away from him.

  “Go, Neth’tek Vulzdagg!” she said to him without turning, busy keeping Gorroth bleeding and growling away, “Now is the hour!”

  Neth’tek climbed onto his feet, watching as Gorroth tried coming in at Ezila from different angles, but each time the woodland spirit spun and kept him at bay. “Not without you!” Neth’tek replied.

  “This is your task, Neth’tek Vulzdagg,” Ezila said, “This is what you were destined for! This is why you were spared the underworld – to go and save your people!”

  “But...” Neth’tek tried to argue.

  “Go, now!”

  Neth’tek turned round and dashed across the ground, dropping low to grab his fallen scimitar from the dust, but stopped where Helen was tied. She looked up at him with a fear stricken expression, and he dropped down next to her and cut the ropes that bound the girl.

  Helen scrambled away, running the way Duoreod and he had come. Neth’tek looked back at Ezila and Gorroth, the demon keeping back for the time being, looking as if it were preparing to leap upon the spirit.

  Every nerve in his body tensed, every voice that had ever spoken to him from the darkness urged him to go back and help his mighty companion. One voice, however, told him to go, to run, to fight the last battle for the world.

  Find them.

  “I finish my fight,” he said.

  Duoreod still lay on the ground when Neth’tek ran up a flight of stairs, leading straight up the mountainside. He put a hand to his head as he sat up, looking at Ezila and the demon standing before one another, a furious battle about to take place. Shaking the stars from his head, though, he turned and grabbed his scimitar, running after The Fallen.

  He wouldn’t let Neth’tek go into the darkness alone.

  *****

  Ezila twisted as Gorroth came in from above, claws extended toward her, and she barely got her sword up in time to cut a clean gash across his chest. But the demon fell over her anyway, tackling the woodland spirit to the ground. They rolled backward, Gorroth coming up on top, and he lifted Ezila from the ground and pinned her against the wall he had thrown Neth’tek into. His claws dug into her already torn skin and clothing of leaves, drawing deep crimson blood from her.

  The demons yellow eyes narrowed as he regarded her green eyes for what he believed to be the last time. “You have come all this way for nothing,” he said. “Your pains, his pains, it has all been for naught.”

  “No, Azila,” Ezila said, her voice firm and resolute even as she bled and felt the awful pain of his claws digging into her essence, “Your life, your chosen course, was never meant to achieve anything in the end... just emptiness... a void... even oblivion.”

  Gorroth opened his maw as if to retort, but her hand shot up suddenly and grabbed him from under the jaw. Immediately after she had a hold on him, a bright emerald light began to emanate from her beaten and bleeding body, the wounds to both her soul and body healing under the brightness of it. Gorroth tried to pull free, but her grasp on him was like that of a thousand men.

  “Now, Azila, you shall feel the pain that you have caused this world,” Ezila said to him, her voice sounding in unison with that a million others. Her eyes burned with a bright emerald green; rage, fear, loneliness, determination and strength. “Your life, this course that you have chosen on the journey through this world, was never meant to bring you anywhere... just an empty void, a unguarded door beyond which is the empty chamber of a thousand tombs. Lay down, seal the lid, never leave the hall of Doomstriker again; for he has claim over your soul. Prepare your soul for eternal torment, you cannot get out. Prepare for oblivion!”

  The light of hatred in Gorroth’s yellow eyes began to fade, the hair covering his body melting away, and his wolfish being shifting back into that of a woodland spirit like Ezila.

  “You fool,” he stammered, unable to keep himself steady under the pressure of her hold and the feeling of his essence leaking away. His hair was fiery red, streaked with gold, and his eyes now green like Ezila’s. “You foolish wretch, if you summon this much force into your being you will destroy yourself!”

  “I know that which I am doing,” Ezila replied evenly.

  “And yet you do this,” Azila said in shocked disbelief, “for him?”

  Ezila seemed to regard Azila for a moment, unblinking. “He’s my friend,” she said.

  She raised her sword up with her free hand, and pointed its slender tip toward the darkness overhead, a beam of light streaking from her blade to break the darkness there. Azila shut his eyes, and their flesh began tearing away to become apart of that light.

  38

  The Coming of Doomstriker

  Time felt unreal in the darkness that Neth’tek stepped into, as if all the world behind him were gone, lost in a void that would soon consume his very being. He felt as though he were surrounded by a concourse of various beings, demons and other spirits watching him with their unseen eyes from that other world, even oblivion, and he stood on the bridge that marked the gap between it and Aldabaar. Although he could not see the ground that he stepped upon, he knew for a surety that it was there. Darkness consumed that place, he could not tell if his eyes were open or shut, or if the way he walked was north or south of the sun. He trusted, however, in that light that he felt somewhere in front of him. A green light, emerald and brilliant.

  He went forward, undaunted by that which he could not see, scimitar in one hand. His free hand held fast to the scarf Skifel had given him so long ago, with the silver evening star of The Beloved sewn on it.

  The veil was suddenly withdrawn from before him, and in that space he saw the Emerald Tree glowing among all that darkness. Peace washed over him, like the light that filled his eyes, and his soul felt repaired from all the damage that the course of his life had taken him.

  Could it be possible for such a shattered heart to be fixed from all the pain that had caused it to break in the first place? Could it be possible for a dead heart to be made alive? He felt as thought the answer were before him.

  He glanced suddenly to the side, thinking he saw a figure passing through the shadows and toward the light beside him. Was that a mirror image of himself walking there? No, it was gone as soon as he thought he saw it, and shrugging it away he walked the rest of the distance toward the tree.

  Emerald branches extended in all direction, each pointing upward and filled with large green leaves – like the ones that constructed Ezila’s dress, it seemed. And even though its light was brilliant, he found that he could stare into it unblinking and with no sting to his sensitive eyes.

  The surface of the trees side appeared glassy, and reflected images of the happenings of the world below, or images of Aldabaar’s history. He saw cities of wondrous construction, forests full of animals and insects, and mountains on which one might stand and view the world like an eagle as it soars overhead. But last of all he saw the caverns of the underworld, a place so familiar
it could have been his own home. And, in fact, it was his home. There was the complex of Vulzdagg, with the statues of the basilisk built round its perimeter as if defending it from roving monsters concealed in the shadows of that shadowy realm.

  “I must save them from what they have fallen to,” he said aloud to himself, reaching out to touch the glassy reflection with the tips of his fingers. “I want to save them, even the ones who destroyed everything that I had called home and family. I must save the world before it is torn apart beneath me, before there is nothing left to save, to cherish.”

  He felt a disturbing presence enter the same space as he, and looking up and to the side he saw the haunting figure of the Shadow Queen leaning on a long staff. The staff twisted toward the top, where it wrapped round a black stone that let off a pale light.

  She smiled broadly, the sight of it sending a chill down Neth’tek’s spine. “So, have you decided to choose the course of the wise?” she asked with a smooth voice. “By now you should have realized the foolhardiness of the road you are traversing. There are easier paths, better ways that we might take over the mountains of turmoil and confusion. There is no need to make things more difficult for yourself, Neth’tek Vulzdagg.”

  Neth’tek looked back at the image of his ancient home, feeling sick as emptiness filled his chest.

  “Come,” the Shadow Queen said, holding her hand out to him, “take my hand, and we will rule this world as it is meant to be ruled.”

  “I’ve seen how you treat your followers,” he said in response, keeping his eyes on the tree as he spoke, the very light giving him confidence in the darkness. “You promise wealth and power to those who would follow you, but you abandon them to doom in the end. Just as The Watcher will abandon you before the end. Do you not realize that your actions, the deeds of The Watcher, are only meant to bring about Doomstriker’s wrath? How can you be so foolish?”