I quickly grabbed my sword. As I unsheathed it my father popped beside me with his sword at the ready. The others blindly huddled together and held their swords, unable to see.
My father and I ran up and struck the Draugr, and with the slash of my sword came the characteristic flash of light as I banished the wraith back to the other side. For an instant the flash lit up the area. There were more of them. Several disembodied Draugr had their gaze fixed upon the watchman. Soon the other soldiers joined the fight, using the flash of my sword to light their way. But it was too late. The Draugr were locked upon the watchman, and soon his body fell limp. He began to violently convulse on the ground, his eyes rolling back into his head. We batted the other Draugr away, trying not to release their deadly spirits into the air. I slashed away at any loose spirits, banishing them. Soon there were no other wraiths, only some grotesque Draugr still within the bodies of dead Lapisians. The others kept them at bay, and I occasionally struck the wraiths when they were loosed from their bodies. Eventually we got rid of them all.
My father tended to the watchman. Now frozen and still, we thought he was dead. Suddenly he stood up with his eyes still rolled back into his head. His eyes were filled with a smoky red glow. He was possessed! He lunged at us, gnashing his teeth and grabbing at us wildly, speaking in unknown tongues and with a voice that was not his own. We backed away, confused, not knowing if he was still our soldier, if he was he still in there, or overtaken by a Draugr within.
The other men shouted at each other. “Don’t kill him!” they said. “It is not him anymore. We must destroy it,” others argued. The watchman occasionally writhed with horror, screaming out at his loudest, falling back to the ground and contorting his body into unnatural positions. Then, intermittently, he would lunge and attack us. It was like the wraiths were trying to take over his body, but he was still fighting with them to retain control.
“The last one that had him. Did you see it disappear?” Peitus asked.
“It is now inside him, trying to take over his life,” my father explained. The last disembodied Draugr to have the watchman’s gaze was not banished. It simply vanished in the air, now inside the man.
“How do we kill it but still save our man?” one of the soldiers asked.
I had an idea. I walked up to the man as he twitched and writhed on the ground. “Hold him still,” I commanded, and a few of our men pinned the soldier down. He looked up at me with his beady red eyes, barking all sorts of insults and speaking in several languages, even laughing with a sinister and deep voice. I took up my sword.
“Don’t kill him!” someone shouted.
“He is no longer a man, Valdren. You must destroy him,” said another.
He began to convulse and scream at the sight of my weapon. I held it closer and his body began to heat up with fever. Then, I pressed the flat part of the blade against his chest. His body arched with pain, and what sounded like several voices moaned in agony. A white smoke rose up from his body, like a blacksmith dipping a forged blade into cold water to cool it. Only it was the opposite; the coldness of my blade created steam upon touching his blazing hot skin.
The Draugr inside began to speak.
“You will never get all of us out! We are here to stay, and if you try to push us out we will take him with us to the other side!” First there was a maniacal laugh, and then the watchman screamed in pain. The scream sounded like it was the man’s real voice, not the Draugr. But there were several inside. I did not know what to do. I looked to my father for guidance.
“Try to evict them, son,” he said. “He is doomed if we leave him this way, and a danger to us. We must at least try to help him, and this is the only way we know how. Force them out!”
I pressed my blade to his chest again, this time commanding the Draugr to leave his body. There was more smoke, more writhing and convulsing, and more grunts and screams of pain and despair. One of the other men lit a torch to see the horror. It was too difficult for them to watch, but simultaneously they were unable to avert their eyes from the soldier’s spiritual battle.
“The other watchman is dead,” Peitus said, after having checked on him. “He was killed with a sword it seems.”
Each time I held my sword to the man it seemed to get worse. I did not know if I was successful in removing any or all of the Draugr from him, but he began to cool down and calm himself, temporarily regaining control. His breathing slowed and his heart stopped racing. He spoke.
“I’m sorry. I put you all in danger. Malbek.” He said the name of the other lookout who was dead. “We fell asleep, and when I awoke the fire had fizzled and we were under attack. I struck out blindly and hit him. I killed him.” He wept. “I thought he was one of them; one of those horrific creatures. That sound,” he wailed. “That sound.” He trailed off and soon closed his eyes in eternal sleep. The demons were gone, but so too was he.
We gathered some stones from the nearby rubble and ruins, placing them on top of the two dead watchmen, giving them a proper burial. In doing so I noticed that the area where I slept was strangely covered in what looked like green grass. It was difficult to see in the grey, dull light of the torch-lit Sepulcre, but I paid it no mind. I felt sorrow for the men we lost. Their graves would forever be tucked away in a deathly and dangerous place. Their families, if they had any, would never be able to visit them. I hoped they would not be forgotten. My father spoke a few solemn words for them in remembrance before we continued on.
#
Our torchlight seemed to no longer be a deterrent for the Draugr. As we pressed onward we encountered more of them. Our line of sight was inhibited as we walked through the narrow ruins of Aspina. The rounded tops of the once perched Lapisian homes dotted the ground all around us, and occasionally Draugr would emerge, having taken over the bodies and bones that were within them.
We soon came upon a tall ornately designed iron gate, flanked on either side by high stone walls that traveled as far as our torchlight could reach in both directions. It was the cemetery. The ground was pitched at an unnatural upward angle. Out in the distance a tall obelisk reached up from the dark fog and loomed over us like a shadow in the night, tipped at an angle perpendicular to the pitched ground, as if leaning toward us. Its marble craftsmanship reflected our torchlight back at us at its peak, and it seemed to glow as if it were eerily bathed in orange moonslight.
We held our weapons at the ready, and with a long low creak, we opened the heavy iron gates. We heard them all around us, moaning, wailing in agony, shuffling along the dead earth.
Eerie shadows were thrown about from our torches. They danced with rhythmic evil in the darkness behind weathered, ancient tombstones of all shapes and sizes. We walked through cold spots, and we heard the whispers. This place was untouched since it fell from the sky so many cycles ago.
The ground was soft, and our feet occasionally sank in as we moved. Peitus lost his footing so badly that he almost fell to the ground. I looked down to see that the earth was unsettled at the foot of each tombstone, as if freshly dug.
Then the wicked humming sound approached from behind a headstone. I quickly ran and struck it down, slashing a bolt through the air and banishing it with an explosion of light. In that flash we saw that they were everywhere. Some disembodied, some tethered to the ancient corpses and skeletons of the Lapisians. They rattled and clattered as they moved toward us, slowly surrounding us in a circle.
“We must close them off. We have no chance of surviving this if they surround us,” said Patreus.
“There,” one of the soldiers pointed. “A crypt. If we back down into there, that will narrow their approach to only a few at a time. But we could be stuck there fighting for quite some time.”
I looked all around. We were doomed. We survived all of our troubles only to meet our end in the Sepulcre. Just then I felt a tight squeeze around my ankle. When I looked down I saw the bony hand of a Draugr reaching up from under the grey soil, grabbing me, trying to pull me down in
to a grave. The Draugr were entering the bodies of the buried, and then clawing their way out of the ground. I yanked my foot from its lifeless grip and struck it with my sword. Then, a dark wraith began to rise up from the ground, loose from the body. Its eyes swirled with eerie redness as it began to wail its enslaving death hum. I quickly struck the demon again. The light of banishment illuminated the ground from underneath, creating a glow that seemed to linger on the grey earth for a moment.
The slow building sound of the Draugr seemed to creep in on us. First it was a distant background buzz, but it eventually become overwhelming and deafening. I heard my name muffled through my bready ear plugs. The others began to clear a path and needed my sword to cast out the wraiths that they freed from the bodies of the dead.
I ran to them, cutting my way through what seemed like scores of dark shadowy spirits. The light was so bright that it seemed like daylight for a few moments, and our path to the crypt was cleared. We ran to it, kicking the door in and then slamming it shut behind us. That would not hold them for long. We took a few steps down a stone stairway and we were in what seemed like a small catacomb. The walls housed a half dozen bodies of ancient Lapisians. They rested undisturbed.
There was not much room to maneuver with freedom, but there was enough room to fight. It would be a difficult battle. Outside we could hear the constant hum of the Draugr. The door began to rattle. They were trying to get in.
A shadow loomed over our heads. Then several more. They were upon us. The soldier who held our torch turned quickly in fear, smashing the end of the torch into the earthen wall. It fizzled out. We were in the darkest of darkness, and the disembodied Draugr were somehow floating through the ground, almost as if they were able to swim through it like water. The hum began to fill the tomb, and I saw one of the bodies entombed in the wall sit up. Its eyes glowed red, eerily illuminating the space around the corpse. The rattling of the door became a distant banging behind the hum of the Draugr. Then they breached the entrance. I had to do something.
I slashed my sword at the only thing I could see, the rising dead Lapisian in the earthen wall. Its bones collapsed into a pile of rubble. I slashed again at the wraith that dwelled within, and the light filled the tomb brighter than a hundred torches. The tight space was filled with disembodied wraiths, and the walking dead shambled down the crypt steps toward us. I hacked and slashed endlessly, both to save our lives and to provide light to see our attackers.
The buzzing hum of the death drone whirred loudly, and one of the soldiers was cornered in the back of the tomb, mesmerized by the swirling red eyes of the Draugr. Several Draugr disappeared into him. He was possessed. He fell to the earthen floor, writhing in agony.
The Draugr kept coming from every direction. The overtaken soldier stood up again, but with an enraged look in his reddened eyes. He charged at Peitus, slicing at him and cutting through his tunic as he leapt back in defense. The other Lapisian bodies in the tomb had risen, also overtaken by wraiths. There were too many.
Then there was what sounded like thunder all around us. Slowly it rumbled, building up to what sounded like the terrible storms that came up and hit the farms from the south in the hot season. Thunder clapped violently, shaking the ground. The dust from the ancient crypt fell onto us from the ceiling above.
The hum of the Draugr ceased, and the demons stood motionless, frozen in time. The thunder stopped, and a faint glow from outside the crypt crept through the piles of bones that began to block the stairway. It softly lit the tomb, casting eerie shadows across the bone and stone.
The possessed soldier fell to the ground, curled up like a child, whimpering in pain. Peitus went to him, asking if he was alright. He did not answer, but there was fear in his eyes.
“Quickly, let’s go back outside to a safer place. Whatever this is, it may not last,” Patreus suggested.
We shoved aside the piles of bones that began to obstruct the stairway out of the crypt, and we went up the stairs. Peitus and I carried the soldier, draping his arms across our shoulders as his legs dangled between us. The cemetery was filled with Draugr, all motionless. Their wing bones arched up over us like the domed ceiling of a macabre atrium. They seemed to bare down on us even while stuck in their lifeless trance. We set the soldier down on a nearby stone bench beside an ancient path that wound through the cemetery, originally crafted for visitors who came in mourning. He lay on his side, still in pain.
“Where’ll we go? If’n they go at us again, there’ll be no way out,” Agimus said.
We all turned toward the glowing light to see what looked like a large boulder or sculptured statue of some kind.
“There,” my father said. “That statue.”
“Yes. That figure,” Patreus corrected.
Upon closer inspection, the statue seemed to be the crude shape of a man, as if an artist started to chisel the likeness of a man but stopped before adding detail. He stood the height of two men, his back arched downward, hands covering his head, with one leg lifted up and bent at the knee, tucked under his chest. His musculature resembled smoothened river rock, and his joints like jagged, steep, sharp mountain peaks.
The statue began to glow white hot. The light pulsated as it became brighter and brighter, filling the gloomy cemetery with a light it hadn’t seen since the ancient times. Beams of light began to escape from within the figure at the joints. The ground gently shook, and like an explosion, a light shot forth in every direction from his body. A ring of illumination rapidly expanded from where he stood, blanketing the ground. It shot outward, slashing into Draugr like a massive bladed disc. As it moved over the Draugr they vanished into the air, leaving behind only a smoky trail of swirling light where they stood.
Our heads whipped as our eyes followed the light. It passed through us, and with a scream, the injured soldier's body lurched. His head was thrown back and his spine arched as far as it could, his hands almost touching his feet behind him. We watched in awe as white smoke poured out of his eyes and his mouth. The Draugr were being cast out. The circle of light grew and reached the ends of the cemetery. Explosions of light fizzled and popped all around us as the Draugr were banished from this place.
The soldier lay limp on the bench, but still alive. His eyes were alert, and he slowly seemed to regain his composure. He had been saved, free of demons.
The figure dimmed to a warm yellow glow. We looked upon it and saw the crude shape of a massive man; half man, half boulder. His hands were on his hips; he must have moved when we were all watching the Draugr.
A deep, low sigh seemed to come from him, as if taking a breath of air after physical exertion. Our men all took a knee, holding their fists to their foreheads. I slowly followed suit, keeping my eyes transfixed on the holy being that stood before us. Perhaps it was because he had just saved our lives from doom, but I felt as if sheer might and righteous power emanated from him, projecting an angelic aura of justice.
“You have served your king well, Haareti.” It spoke. We knew it to be Felsson.
CHAPTER 21
“Praise the king, the Divinae have returned!” one soldier cheered. Whoever still had good use of their bready ear muffles removed them. Most had become stale and hardened, and were discarded earlier in our travels.
“You have made contact with the others?” Felsson asked.
“No, only you.” Patreus replied.
“Then let us hope they all return. I was not made aware of their plans. I have been in isolation since the battle, and from what I understand Gelande has since gone missing, likely destroyed by Scievah, or perhaps even by the king since he neglected his duties. How long has it been since the battle?”
“What battle?” Patreus asked, sheepishly.
“The battle in which Scievah took the Firestone and cast us out. A cycle? Ten cycles?” he asked. We all looked at each other in confusion. “A hundred cycles?” None of us knew how to answer him. It seemed as though Felsson did not perceive time the way we all did. “Thousands then
. He must have become very powerful in that time. My duties are simple. Train you, protect you, and go to battle with you. After Scievah is destroyed I shall return to my duties of protecting the stone at its new altar.”
“None of us know where it is. How will you find it?” Peitus asked.
“I know where it is. I hid it. Let us hope Scievah doesn’t find it first,” he said. When Felsson moved it sounded like rocks shifting and grinding across one another. His body was made of boulders. Green and yellow moss seemed to grow across him as well, particularly in between musculature and joints. His eyes swirled bright blue, as if running water rushed behind them. “Take me to your camp, I gather it is not here within this dank pit of darkness.”
“It is a day and then some, down the mountain to the northeast,” Patreus answered him.
“Lead the way,” he said.
Felsson was a direct creature. It was strange to experience his presence. I did not know much about this mythical entity, but despite his definitively other-worldly appearance, his mannerisms were those of men.
We walked on in silence for some time. At one point someone asked Felsson about the ancient times, but it was almost as if he didn’t recall. Or perhaps he did not wish to speak of those days. He brushed off the questions, focused strictly on his task.
He looked upon me studiously from time to time, eyeing my stature, questioning me with his eyes. At one point, he and I were close by with no one else in earshot.
“So you are the one?” He stated it more than asked.
I didn’t know how to answer. I still had my own reservations. “I have been involved in events that ordinarily do not happen without the power of the stones,” I blurted.
He continued to study me, asking nothing further. “Come now, you slackers. Pick up the pace!” He addressed the others who had fallen behind. He seemed very serious and strict. I suppose, to an angel, guiding and protecting a bunch of corruptible Haareti must be like an adult dealing with a group of fussy children.
The Return of the Fifth Stone Page 28