by Wolfe Locke
This has to be a dream. This has to be some kind of a trick. Tentatively, John proceeded forward. He fully expected something to rise from the grass, but nothing did. Soon he reached the establishment unmolested and went inside.
It was empty. John entered and looked around and was immediately met by the smell of food. I can’t remember the last time I’ve eaten proper food, though it doesn’t have the same appeal that it used to. May as well check it out though. He saw there was a table in the center of the room piled high with food.
Even with his recent meal in his monster form, John suddenly felt hungry. Standing there in front of the food, John forgot all about what he had been through.
If this is a dream, and I’m actually unconscious somewhere, just let me have my fill and enjoy a few peaceful moments.
John piled a plate high with food and sat down in a chair next to the hearth. It was lit by a fire that warmed the room, he ate in silence. All of his cares were forgotten. The wound in his chest had caked over in black blood and would soon be scarred over. In his present state, John didn’t care.
John simply sat there, eating and watching the flames dance in the fireplace. He should have known that it would not last. When next he brought the fork to his mouth, he saw not the meat and potatoes on his plate, but a cluster of writhing maggots. Really couldn’t just let me have this one, could you?
John jumped up furiously and saw that his entire plate of food was now the same. He could feel maggots crawling around. John spit them out onto the floor as his body was wracked with nausea.
A skeletal hand burst through the wooden floorboards beneath him and latched onto John’s ankle. He tried to kick it away, but another sprang up to take its place.
John thrashed with all the strength that he had left in his body, but it was not enough. Those hands grabbed him and started dragging him down into the ground. The floorboards bowed and broke. John was pulled through into the soil beneath.
His mouth and eyes were filled with the dirt. He could not see. He could not breathe. This is how it ends? Suffocation? Just when he thought he would die from lack of oxygen; John fell through the soil and onto hard ground.
He took deep, shuddering breaths, and then looked around, trying to get his bearings. Above him, there was no soil, just a stone ceiling that stretched onward and a room lit by eldritch light, and by that light John could see a row of headstones..
John watched as the graves before him churned. The dirt parted and skeletal hands pulled their way out. The undead within glared at him with eyes that glowed a pale orange.
When will it end?
John got to his feet, drawing his axes once more. He was so tired.
Slowly, the undead shuffled toward John, seeking to add him to their ranks once and for all. To his dismay, John saw that undead were not the only thing he would have to contend with this time around as fleshy ghouls pulled their way free of the dirt as well. Each of the ghouls wearing the telltale uniform and equipment that John recognized as belonging to adventurers. .
These beings were not like the undead skeletons. They still possessed some of the cunning they had in life. John knew only a few things about ghouls. Which was that they were a race of monstrous horrors that fed on the undead to sustain themselves. They looked like walking corpses, with white hair and skin stretched tight like leather over whatever they’d been wearing when first transformed.
Each of them carried steel swords that still gleamed with an edge.
If I never see another monster it’ll be too soon.
To his credit, John did not back down. He stood firm in the face of yet another horror. John was battered and bruised, but he was not yet dead. He was not yet ready to join the ranks that now marched toward him.
Well, the best defense is a good offense. John wasted no time. He was tired of this place and all that he had been through.
Soon John, you’re almost there. Just a little further. I forbid you. You cannot die here.
John gritted his teeth and refused to quit. He laid into the undead like a man possessed. He swung his axes this way and that, scattering bones in every direction. One of the ghouls jumped up on him and for a second, John thought it was the end. He reached up and tossed the ghoul off of him. It tried to capture his arm in a vice grip, but John kicked it away.
Even more skeletons surrounded him, but John didn’t care. He laid into them with his thrice blessed axes the enchantments on the blades allowing him to easily cut through bone. However, with each one he killed, it seemed another was there to take its place.
John was working on systematically destroying a group of the undead when a skeletal hand shot out of the dirt and caught his foot. He went sprawling, thrown off balance by the interruption. Skeletons and ghouls were on top of John in an instant. He lashed out with his axes from a downed position. I need to keep them off of me, but how can I with this many of them?
John was feeling overwhelmed. Skeletal fingers dug into his skin like daggers. The pain was intense and immediate. Then, there was a weird sensation in his head and half of his vision simply went dark. Am I dying?
John screamed and kicked and slashed with all of his might. “I won’t go down like this! I won’t let this be the end! I am John Younger, and no god will decide my fate!”
Just then, a dome of pure white light erupted from John’s thrice blessed axes, and all the undead were thrown away.
John did not wait to recover. He got to his feet and readied himself once more. The blast had only sent the undead flying, it had not killed them.
What was that? How did I do it? The radiant one?
But even as John thought about it, he tried to justify it as a stroke of luck. An action brought on by need and desperation. He would not be able to pull it off again.
With the undead and the ghouls out of commission, John looked down at himself to assess the damage. He was soaked in blood from so many tiny wounds, including the large one in his chest.
He kept waiting for the vision in his left eye to come back, but it didn’t. With a sinking feeling, John reached up to where his eye had been, his real eye and felt that it was gone.
John’s scream filled the crypt like the dying souls in which he now fought against. An unbridled rage filled him. He ran to the now recovering undead and ghouls and began to lay waste to them. He fought like a whirlwind. He fought like he had nothing left to lose.
The glow of his axes slashed through the air, splitting undead and ghouls where ever they stood to challenge him. Once again, a mass of them thought to come at him together, but John would not have it. He had been through enough and it was time for this to end.
John cut through them like they were tissue paper. Like they were as insubstantial as a spirit. He whirled to meet his next opponent and found…nothing.
Bones lay scattered at his feet. Dead and dying ghouls littered the crypt.
“Come on!” John screamed, spittle flying from his mouth. “Come on! Is that all you’ve got? I’m not done with you yet!”
John kept screaming into the surrounding darkness, but nothing else came. Eventually, his voice became hoarse, and he crumpled to his knees.
There, on the soil of the crypt, John cried. He cried for all he had been through and all he had lost. He cried at the thought of dying in this place, never seeing the outside world again. He cried because at that moment, he did not know what else he could possibly do.
John Younger, you have fought well. You have made it further than all but one before you. This is not your place to be. You do not belong here, but so long as you carry those who have bound themselves to you, I cannot let you leave.
You are close to the end of my dungeon. The end is near. I will offer you a chance at salvation once you see the truth of this place and its purpose.
You are almost there. You need only hold out a little longer. I know you John. You will not stop. Not now that you know how close you are
John considered the words but said nothing. There was something different about this place. It weighed heavier on his mind and soul. The weight had been building gradually as he descended, and now it was the worst that it had ever been.
Slowly, John got to his feet. There was a flow of power, and when John turned, he saw a magnificent gate at the back of the crypt.
Even in John’s current state, with everything that was going on, he saw it was beautiful.
It was silver inlaid with flowing gold designs. It gave off a kind of glow, but not like what came from John’s thrice blessed axes, but different.
As he watched, the gate opened inward, down the middle. John could not see what lay beyond, but he knew in his heart that whatever it was, it was the end.
Everything that he had been through. Every challenge, every trial, every loss had led up to this.
John did not wait around and stare. He was done waiting. He gathered what strength he had left and stepped over the threshold.
Chapter 34: An End and a Beginning
* * *
On the other side, John could hear a steady, almost drumming sound. It helped that a cool breeze was flowing from the same direction and he followed along on its path and kept his hearing focused and moved with a purpose. The entire time careful to watch out for whatever awaited him further in.
It wasn’t long before he saw a glimmer of green light shining through a small opening and he picked up the pace. The opening was overgrown with with roots and heavy with cobwebs. This differs from anything I’ve seen before.
John pressed through the opening and wondered why the “gods” he carried within him had gone so quiet. The opening led to a small cave that was full of bones and instinctively, John knew a fight was coming. More undead? Already?
A glint of light against gold drew his attention from the bones and towards a statue on a platform within the room. It was a golden statue bearing the familiar face of the Marcus Lumiere for whom so many had died while searching. The ragged man? Was that him?
The question was erased from his mind as John looked closer at the statue. He felt an aura of peace come over him, but there was something about the statue that seemed off. It was ringed by twelve chained pedestals as if to signify that it kept them restrained and not him.
A terrible pain erupted in his body, as if it was being torn apart. The essences that he had stored, absorbed, and even the gods he had bonded to himself were torn from his body. Brilliant prismatic orbs flew out from him and hovered over the individual pedestals until all twelve were covered.
John collapsed on the ground, suddenly feeling weak, as if his strength had been taken from him. I lost all the power I acquired, didn’t I? What am I going to do?
He braced himself against the ground and tried to get it. His hand brushed his leg, and he felt the familiar grip of his trusted weapons and hardened his resolve. The same thing I always do. He pulled them out and saw they had lost their shine and blessing placed upon them. Maybe it’s better this way. With his twin axes at the ready, John went forward.
The wall behind him collapsed. End of the line. I’ve known for a while now this was a one-way trip. Even if I wanted to go back, it’s no longer an option. The thumping sound drew his attention as he looked down again at the statue. The thumping got louder until finally John could see an otherworldly presence muttering from within the darkness that had settled on the platform.
The chamber filled with eldritch green light and the air grew tense, heavy with a dark malicious energy as the shade continued to chant. Beams of light shot out of all the orbs and joined forming into a dark cloud. That can’t be good. From within the dark cloud, a nightmarish vision crawled through. A twisted and writhing mass of black shadows over bones, its skin resembling a oil slick and near translucent.
A thousand tiny insect-like legs carried it forward towards the shade, and once it was closer, the shade disappeared with an exaggerated bow as it returned to the darkness whence it had come after whispering the entity’s name.
"Nightmare Chimera."
John Younger. It cannot be helped. The seal on the Twelve has been broken and I can no longer contain them. Defeat the monster they have become.
I have little choice, do I? John thought as the monster crawled forward. I accept.
Rocks crumbled and fell down behind him, as the monster roared. John dove away from the falling rocks and prepared to defend himself, but the attack never happened. Instead, the monster abruptly stopped as if it had sensed something and began to probe around.
I cannot bond with you until the Prince has been released. He is sealed with the statue near the twelve pedestals. If you take his place, then and only then can I grant you the power to take on this monster.
The monster had oil like tendrils which hardened into points that were sharp as spears and stabbed into the earth. The Nightmare Chimera rapidly diminished, it’s colossal form growing smaller as black ooze was absorbed into the floor of the cave. For a moment, John let himself believe that danger had passed, but it was short-lived relief.
The dirt erupted in front of him in explosion of dust and grime. John was forced to leap to the side as a spear of bone buried itself deep into the rock wall behind him. From within the whole, a red-eyed skeletal monstrosity emerged from the ground, pulling itself up on long bony forepaws out of the hole it had been buried in.
With a roar the monster came at it. It was somewhere between that of an undead and the howl of a monster of the abyss, The Nightmare Chimera with a quickness that seemed impossible for something of its size it jumped forward toward him. For a moment, John thought he heard familiar laughing.
Those dead eyes, animated with reddest crimson looked directly at him with a hunger to consume and ran at him, I can’t fight something like that. As if to emphasize the point, John saw that frozen puddles of dark sludge was left in the monster’s wake.
John looked for an escape and found none in the cavern, only a sense of impending dread and doom knowing this was an enemy beyond him. Even then, something within him snapped.
The animal part of his brain took control as the human part retreated. Wielding his twin axes, John attacked. With a furious lunge, he ran forward and met the monster head on with a slash of his weapon. The blows landed true, leaving deep cuts in the bone that wept black and green ooze, but the monster persisted, and a spear of darkness shot out from its underbelly and stabbed him through the torso. A ruinous injury that John could not shrug off.
I can’t quit now. John felt immense pain but refused to admit defeat. With a bloody cough, he countered and attacked one of the monster’s heels. It was a vicious hit with the twin axes that tore through flesh and sinew as the Nightmare Chimera’s hind leg snapped off. For a moment the monster was left momentarily hobbled.
It was only a momentary reprieve, as the black ooze seemed to shift and reorganize itself in a way that allowed the monster to get moving, and it did. But John was already on the move as well, a trail of dark blood left behind him.
You are dying, John Younger, after how far you’ve come Reach my statue and bond with me, it is the only way for you to survive.
It was hard for him to breathe. I can’t argue with that logic. I’ll die otherwise. He took off in a dead sprint that quickly taxed the rest of his body. Every step agony as more and more of the bone spears erupted through his torso. Had he been a lesser man, he would have died running, but John was not a lesser man.
With a hand stretched out, John reached Aeon’s statue, and in flash of light found himself transported within the statue while he looked down at a body that took his place, the body of Marcus Lumiere.
The Nightmare Chimera howled but did not approach. Instead, the monster seemed to work on finding its way out. It can’t get me here.
No, it cannot John, but neither ca
n we reach out. Your body is too far damaged for me to give you my power, instead we must bide our time and heal while you acquire more power within me. I cannot leave this place without a living host, and as you are right now our bonding with kill you.
No. One day we will hunt these false gods and purge them and all who tend to them in a cleansing purge.
And what of me? John asked, feeling sleepy as he tried to move and found himself unable to. What about me? How long do we have to wait?
I only need your body John. It’s time for you to sleep. When you wake, it will be in a new age. Rest now John, you have earned it.