Heart of the Maiden: (Lords of the Deep Hells Book 3)

by Paul Yoder

  “Denloth, see to the others,” the arisen lord said, turning to Fin, who was just now getting back to his feet after the tumble.

  Denloth stepped up to take his master’s position, facing the only saren knight that was not occupied with an Oathbound. He smiled, knowing the small failing party of knights would soon be put down—knowing that the saren he eyed knew the truth of her fate as well.

  She squared up, regardless of the odds at that point, not giving the wicked man further satisfaction that he was seeking in her despair.

  Switching her sword to her shield hand, she unlatched a throwing axe, raising it to throw it at the warlock just as Denloth raised his hands up, a spectral purple glow shooting forth from his countenance, images of skulls and anguished faces flying out, penetrating through the saren knight, freezing her for a moment as Denloth began chanting incantations, preparing for his next attack as Jen worked her muscles free of the hex-like starch that stiffened her limbs.

  Fin stood up, stance off-centered, showing Sha’oul only one side of his frame. He had learned a bit of brawling from Matt over the years, and he was no schlub when it came to fisticuffs, and seeing that Sha’oul had literally thrown off his hexweave barrier that would have stopped most physical attacks, he smirked, looking forward to driving his fists into the tyrant’s face.

  Sha’oul unclipped his gauntlets, dropping them to the floor, revealing blackened, cracked hands, the taint of the arisen ingrained throughout his flesh beneath his armor.

  He walked towards Fin, beckoning Fin to make a swing at him.

  The blinding lights from the crystals all about them had, by that point, permanently damaged his vision, Fin guessed, and the ringing was about to split his head in two, but he held his stance firm, debating on if he should take the bait or wait for the huge man to make the first move. He knew that with what he had planned, he only had one shot at getting the upper hand.

  “On with it,” Sha’oul gruffed, striking deceptively swift, slapping Fin, sending him tumbling another ten feet towards the back of the room.

  Fin got back up, but Sha’oul was upon him, snatching him up by the cloak, holding him aloft for a moment before Fin swiveled out of his cloak, pulling out a dagger along his chest bandolier, plunging it towards the giant’s chest, Sha’oul blocking the dagger with his own forearm just before Fin could complete the blow.

  Sha’oul gripped Fin’s arm, snapping it in half with one hand, grabbing the man by the neck, bringing him face to face. He opened his maw, exposing jagged black and yellow teeth, his rank breath overwhelming Fin as he brought him in, intending to begin feasting on him.

  Fin swung with his free hand, and Sha’oul allowed him to, laughing at the weak, last display the man exhibited.

  His laughter ceased abruptly, a sharp pang indicating something amiss. Fin brought back his arm, his hand clenched firmly on the cloaked dagger Sultan Metus had given him, jabbing its blade back into the crease of the shoulder and neck.

  As Sha’oul felt a blade dig deep into his chest, he reflexively flung Fin off to the side, slamming him into one of the crystal nodes, then continued to tumble another twenty feet further. The crystal snapped, slamming into the floor, exploding, setting off the crystal next to it.

  The pillar next to Sha’oul burst, blasting him down, attempting to hold himself up with his good arm as the room erupted in chaos, flickering lights and explosions running amuck along the Sun Room’s various quartz pillars.

  Denloth ducked upon the initial explosion, and Jen, seeing his distraction, lunged in at him, sword point leading, but his obsidian ring flashed magenta, and he fell back into a fold in reality, the image he left warping into a dissolution of a shadow of himself before fading into the blinding light of the room, leaving her there, thrusting into the rippling space in front of her.

  Two of the Oathbound that had been slowly dissecting the flagging saren knights, Seam-jumped into the void, streaks of opalescent scars tearing into the sandstone where they had been standing.

  The last Oathbound started to follow his comrade’s trail into the Seam but was tackled by the knight it faced, Sarah kicking the stumbling arisen’s helmet off, following up with a deep stab into its chest cavity. The Oathbound exploded into a storm of armor and bone shrapnel at the fatal blow, sending her flying back to the entrance of the room, dazed and bruised.

  Amidst all the commotion and explosions, Sarah attempted to sit up, having to dodge to the side just as a red wave of aether slammed into the rubble that had collapsed in the doorway, blasting it clear, Sha’oul’s large figure in a dead run, his right arm slumped as he rushed for the door.

  He raised his good hand, releasing the binding hexweave that had been slowly strangling Revna, draining the life from her on the floor. The tendrils weaved around him as he smacked aside the two knights that tried to hold him back, rushing through the door only to be met with a blade slashing at his neck, the tendrils barely holding the killing edge from his flesh.

  Hamui shot a crimson beam towards him from behind, blasting a hole in his hexweave barrier, searing his ear off, grazing his head as he grabbed Yozo’s sword blade, only to have another blade jab into his thigh, digging in through the unprotected area.

  He yelled in frustration, cursing in a dark tongue, waxed tapestries along his armor melting and burning off as his body lit on fire, forcing Yozo back, but another beam shot in at him, this time shattering the rest of what protection the tendrils had to offer, the weave completely unraveling now.

  His chanting continued, and more scrolls burned up along his armor, wax melting into every groove of metal, and a ball of flame lurched forward, engulfing Hamui, tumbling him along with it until it rammed into a pillar, cracking it at its base, exploding violently.

  A longsword dug into his back, Sarah suffering through the licking flames to score a hit, but Sha’oul was empowered now, and all he looked upon were doomed.

  His flaming eyes met hers, and from them shot a flicker of light, flitting quickly into her face, blowing her brains out from the back of her head a blink later.

  He looked at Yozo, his stare emotionless. Yozo stood firm, but the flaming devil seemed beyond him then, the element of surprise spent, and he watched as the flaming man turned and loped off out of the room down the corridors.

  Out of the room rushed Jezebel dragging Fin with her as Alva lunged out of the screaming room with Revna over her shoulders just as more quartz explosions sounded off, sending shrapnel flying into the two still in the doorway, blowing them down.

  Yozo rushed to their aid, pulling them further out of the doorway, peering back into the room quickly to see if there were any other knights alive needing to be extracted.

  Yozo let out a steadying sigh. With the amount of carnage that last blast had done within the room, he didn’t think it necessary to even risk going in to check, three of the quartz nodes still intact and whirling violently.

  “Come. Help me get the others out of this place,” Yozo said to Jezebel that was rousing from the blast, the only other reliably conscious member remaining in their group.

  As he shouldered the two sarens, Jezebel kneeling down to scoop up Fin, all three unconscious, Yozo looked over to the cracked, burnt pillar and saw a charred body.

  Burnt bone stuck through skin along his charred face, everything hallowed out by the extreme heat of the ball of fire that had slammed into him.

  “Rest in peace, Hamui,” Yozo uttered as the two left the room, leaving behind the temple halls which had now become a tomb.

  14

  Endless Ash

  “Wyld, come back!” Malagar shouted, immediately entering a coughing fit as the caustic air entered his tender lungs.

  “Wyld—” he coughed out, collapsing to his knees in the hardened ash slopes they had been deposited on, the canyons of dingy mustard-colored sediment towering behind them as Malagar and Lanereth attempted to simply continue to breathe in the hellish environment.

  The kaith’s Seam scars flickered
in the distance as she bolted into the canyon pathways leading up the mountain.

  A short crack sounded above them followed by an echoing thump, a flash of light splitting through the heavy acrid cloud cover, some sort of lightning announcing the acid rain that came moments after.

  Lanereth cried out, the polluted rain sizzling into her skin and hair, Malagar forsaking Wyld to her own fate as he struggled to get back to Lanereth, the two of them making their way into an alcove against the corrugated basalt cliff walls.

  The downpour rushed through in sheets, the torrent of noise that came and went with the deluge disorienting the two beyond the sting that slowly ate away at their clothes, skin, and hair.

  They looked on as the storm began to lessen, the main downpour passing on through the sickly fields below them, working through coughing fits, attempting to acclimate to the harsh air.

  “Where are we?” Malagar chuffed out, looking out over the hellscape before them at the waist-high polyp field of frilled fungus that seemed to stretch on forever.

  “Planes of Ash—” Lanereth hoarsely whispered, barely getting out the words before doubling over, hacking violently once more.

  “We must move,” Malagar managed out, grabbing Lanereth’s wrist, gently tugging her along as they made their way up the canyon path they had been deposited at.

  Stumbling along the ridged incline, another sheet of acidic rain rushed over them, drenching them once again, eating holes through their surface-level clothes, causing them to grunt and moan out in pain as they squinted out through red, burning eyes, tripping along through the canyon.

  Lanereth wobbled along, holding to her staff for support, the sizzle of acid along her skin causing weakening tremors to run through her frame. Malagar rushed up ahead, looking for cover.

  The corridor eventually opened up into a wide canyon room, blocked by a rock shelf, rust-colored slime lightly coating the walls and floor.

  “The air,” Malagar said through catches of breath, “seems better here.”

  Looking around in the canyon room they had stumbled upon, he could see dark holes along the room’s floor. Bones and half portions of some sort of creature laid cluttered all about, half morphed into the surrounding ash and basalt surface of the walls and floor, as if the formation was a living thing itself, slowly absorbing any that had had the displeasure to die upon its surface.

  The canyon did continue upwards, but only after a tall shelf that loomed before them, parts of corpses hanging from its edge as if strung up like an effigy to ward off all who visited.

  The slot canyon they had made their way into did have some overhead coverage from the rain. If another downpour happened upon them, the overhead shelves promised at least partial coverage and dryness. He knew how flash floods could rip through canyons like the one they were in now and hoped that the ominous holes along the floor were present further up to provide drainage. If a wall of acid water were to rip through the canyon, he knew that would be the end for them, but it was a threat they could do little to nothing about at the moment, so he set the worry aside for the time being.

  Lanereth’s coughing fits had died down, but she was still not in a position to speak, wheezing through waves of pain deep in her throat, chest, and along every inch of her skin, holding desperately to her white staff.

  Malagar fared better, the leather he wore protecting his vitals from the direct exposure to the rainfall they had suffered through. He was shorn, as well, and as he looked to Lanereth’s long plaited hair, each strand soaked with acid, he realized she was being eaten alive with each passing moment.

  He hastily began to disrobe, taking off his jerkin and other protective gear, seeing the robed saren shivering in a mesh of disintegrating cloth, her hair falling out in clumps as she lightly pulled a handful of it out as she itched at her scalp.

  “Lanereth, we need to get you out of your robes. They’re falling apart anyways,” Malagar hoarsely said, stripping down to his still dry linen undergarments.

  She shivered in response, hunched over, holding herself.

  Malagar kneeled down, tentatively pulling on Lanereth’s rags, her top disintegrating before he could even work at pulling it over her.

  Tearing the rest of her garments off in swaths, he slopped the deteriorating silk cotton patches from her body, taking a strip of dry hemp from his light gambeson to pat her dry with.

  Each touch of the rough material on her melted skin sent painful shivers through her, and as Malagar was beginning to make progress with wicking off the yellow film of acid from her skin, she made an effort to stand for him to continue the painful process on her lower half.

  Standing erect split her skin in places, and she held back cries of pain as she forced the movement.

  Malagar brushed his brow to keep sweat mingled with acid from getting in his eyes. Bringing his hand down, he saw that he had scraped off a layer of skin with the subconscious movement.

  He did a quick pat down of his own head and areas that his armor had not protected him from, skin sloughing off all along his scalp and sections of his arms and legs.

  He had gotten off much lighter than the saren, he could see. Standing before him naked, only a simple necklace remaining on her upper half and her staff that she clung to at her side, he could easily tell the damage to her extremities and head were severe, though, thankfully, much of her torso only received minimal burns, having shed the drenched clothes just as the dampness had soaked through.

  “We need to clothe you,” Malagar said, seeing that she was eyeing the armor. He guessed she hesitated for the same reason he did—the both of them knowing that covering her open skin with hemp and leather was going to be an excruciating process. He knew moving around in it with her skin so raw was going to be a living hell for her.

  “Let me—” she started, clearing her scratched up throat before continuing, “—attempt to reach out to Sareth, first.”

  He readily nodded, hoping for her sake that her goddess would be able to help them in some way.

  She raised her staff high, stretching out her body, opening new cracks in her skin as she prayed, shouting out into the canyon that loomed over them. Her voice seemed muffled somehow, like the walls were absorbing her prayers, or that something in the air snagged her voice as it rose.

  Though her words were beautiful, angelic even, he could hear the pain etched in between each breath, and the vision of her naked melted body reaching to the yellow ashen sky, calling out in desperation to her deity, surrounded by walls of ash, slime, and bone, caused him to give in momentarily to despair, knowing that there would be no heavenly answer there in their hellish canyon.

  15

  A Figure Along the Cliffs

  Flames along his outline fluttered out as Sha’oul stumbled out of the temple’s entrance, the sun already well over the canyon’s edge, the air outside cooling rapidly as a gust made its way through the crags.

  Black blood seeped through the seams of is disheveled armor, pooling on the cracked sandstone tile beneath him as he looked up to the long climb up the canyon wall he had before him.

  He ripped off a plate of armor, dropping it to the ground, shedding weight that would only slow him down and overexert him at that point.

  He burned one last spell from the surface of his pauldron before tossing it, a white-hot flame appearing at his fingertips. He brought the flame to the corner of his neck, searing closed the stab wound, the one the man with the hidden blade had inflicted upon him.

  He would see to that one’s death personally.

  After cauterizing the rest of his deeper wounds, he released the flame, leaning upon the archway, catching his breath for a moment before slugging across the canyon floor.

  The sun was low on the horizon by the time he made it over the canyon’s edge. The wind blew stinging sand high into the atmosphere, tinging the sky an ashen yellow just before dusk.

  He looked down to the ancient temple one last time, distantly concerned for how his enemy fared, knowin
g that he had cut it close in the Sun Room. He had been caught by surprise more than once, and he had played the battle too casually. He would not underestimate those that had been hounding him for so long a second time.

  And what of Denloth, he mused. His warlock had abandoned his post at the very moment he had needed him most. A simple blood penance would not be enough to forgive him of such a dereliction.

  He started forward. He knew his army would have only made it to the exit of the great canyon’s entrance on the north side by the time the moon was high, and now, with no aid, he knew he was truly vulnerable. He needed to rejoin his ranks as soon as possible.

  The light sandstorm made it difficult to make out much of what was ahead of him, and though it would make finding his way through the barren waste bothersome, he also knew it would help to obscure him if indeed those who he had just dealt with did gather the nerve to immediately resume their hunt.

  He halted in his tracks, more than a bit stunned to see a figure standing in front of him, the desert wind dying down a bit to reveal the complete mess of a man, sunbaked and disheveled almost beyond recognition to any that might have known him.

  Though dressed as one native to the region, his features belonged to one foreign—one he had been shown many times in recent months in visions. The one that had been stricken with a hex by his late warlock, which bound the man to him, both body and soul.

  “All to blood…,” the man croaked out, his throat dry as the desert he walked upon, “…and blood to ash. The Great Ashen One has need of me. I serve him, and so, I serve you now. What is your command?”

  Sha’oul’s surprise melted to wicked pleasure. He had been waiting for this one to come home to him for some time now. For once that day, the fates had smiled upon him.

  “Come,” Sha’oul said, his voice deep and smooth in contrast to his new companion, “follow me.”