[Mkguild] "To Steal a Soul" -- Part 5

[Kendo Virmir]

I will admit I struggled quite a bit with this part, although I'm
fairly satisfied with what I finally managed to put down.  Please do
not hesitate to inform me if something jumps out as overtly lame. :)

Many thanks to everyone who is reading and everyone who has offered
comments so far.  I have newfound respect for authors of longer works.
 Wow... this is so hard!

But very fulfilling. :)

----

"To Steal a Soul"
Part 5


Empty hallways splayed in all directions.  Blast it, what sort of mad
tower was this?  I followed Lady Vale as quickly as I was able, which
admittedly wasn't very quick with my short legs.  My calves ached and
the pads of my feet became sore from slapping against the stone floor.
 She at least had the decency not to run at full speed.  We rounded
corner after corner, going this way and that, one perfectly square
corridor after another.  Ever since cursed to the miserable life of a
scout, I had done nothing but follow that blasted waving tail of hers.

She slowed and pointed her nose downward.  I had thought we were
fleeing randomly, but I suddenly realized she was tracking the whole
way.  I will admit I was impressed.

I knew I hadn't killed the lizard man I hit with the fireball. It
would only be moments before he roused, and then there'd be a legion
of screaming plant-things down our throats.  And possibly the black
robes.  I didn't even have a clue what they were.  Blast it, I hoped
they could not track like us...

Vale stopped and scowled, stooping low to take in more of some odor.
"What is it?" I whispered, out of breath.

"Blood."

Blood?  Oh, blast it...

"Whose?"

She crouched on her haunches, letting her long black tail rest on the
floor around her ankles. "It... it might be..."

Echoing somewhere down the hallway, a pig squealed.

My ears stood on end.  Things began to click.  A cult of mages.
Animal sacrifices.

Rufus was a boar morph...

Vale took a few steps toward the cry after it died, her mouth gaping,
her wide eyes stricken with terror...  Then we froze and held our
breath, our ears angled forward to pick up some sound-- any sound.

Nothing.

I heard the blood rushing through my ears, my heart pounding with each
pulse.  Vale's leather armor creaked as she shivered.  Still
nothing...  By the gods... could they really be sacrificing Keepers?
People that were animals?  Animals that were people?

That's why they didn't need Claudia...

I gulped.

Scratch.  Scratch.

We both caught the noise coming from beyond the stone, like a mouse
trapped in the wall, only more metallic.  Vale began moving towards a
simple wooden door and I followed without thinking.  My only thought
was what I was going to do when we ran into these sick ceremonial
daedra/demon worshipers or whatever they were.  I nearly lost it.  I
had to fight to keep the energy swelling in my fists from bursting
into flame.  I was going to kill them, that was for sure.

No, just breathe...  I shut my eyes and tried to calm down.  If I
began throwing spells left and right, our cover would be blown
instantly.  I'd put Vale in jeopardy.  There was no way I was going to
do something more stupid than her.

Vale slowly opened the creaking door.  A single oil lamp hanging from
the ceiling bathed the room beyond in a dim glow.  A table and chairs
stood in one corner of the cold stone chamber and several metal cages
lined the walls, each resting on their own table.  All were empty
except the largest, which was barely big enough to contain the
grayish-brown beast within.  The ferocious hyena stopped clawing at
the bars of his cage and looked up at us.

"Vincent?"  Vale whispered to the animal from across the room.

The hyena's black ears folded and he shook his head up and down
vigorously.  I never thought I'd actually be relieved to see him
alive.  Vale ran over to the cage and shook the door a few times,
finding it securely fastened.  She drew her blade and slashed open the
lock with a mighty cleave, sparks flying into the air as metal hit
metal.  The door fell open and the striped hyena leapt out.  Vale's
eyes continued to dart around the room from empty cage to empty cage,
but Rufus was no where to be seen.

The hyena quickly grew into a larger humanoid shape and leapt up to
hug a surprised Vale.  He was of course clad only in his fur and I
imagined the dhole morph was blushing under her own.  "By Akkala, am I
glad to see you!"  He said as his massive arms wrapped around her
frame and squeezed her tight.  Yeah, ignore the short mage.

I would not have believed it, but the most irritating "tough guy" in
the world was as terrified as a small child.  The uncharacteristic
behavior was frightening.  They broke him...  "They got Rufus... They
got Rufus..." He murmured into Vale's shoulder plate.

Vale grabbed his shoulders, pushed him away, and looked into his eyes.
 He was at least a half foot taller than her. "Now listen..." she
whispered in a commanding tone.  She then began to calmly ask the
overexerted hyena-man questions.

By then, something else in the room had stolen my attention.

It didn't look like anything in particular at first, just a cloth
draped over the chair in the corner.  But I was drawn to it, and I
approached it slowly, cautiously... an odd sense of dread filling my
heart.  Perhaps it was the unnatural whiteness of the cloth.  My heart
began to thrash against my chest as the blazing red trim came into
view.  Crimson flames danced around the edges of the fabric.  Long
forgotten memories flooded my mind as I ran my claws over those
stitched flames, feeling their smoothness under the pads upon my
fingertips.

By the gods.  It was my grandfather's robe...

I was stunned.  Paralyzed with my mouth gaping.  I had not seen the
man in thirteen years...  The man who had taught me so much in but a
few pages of scribbled notes... My mind was flooded with questions.
Was he a victim of these travesties?  Was he involved?  What in blazes
was he doing in Galendor? Perhaps this robe merely belonged to someone
else?

"Wait!"  Vale's voice broke my trance.  I do not know how long I stood
there staring at the robe, but by the time I turned around, the hyena
was fully dressed in his leather armor and was strapping his
broadsword to his back.  Apparently his clothing had been conveniently
tossed in the corner of the room.

"I'm going to go kill all of those things right now!" he growled.

Lady Vale held a claw in his face. "Do you want them to find us?"  she
fumed in hushed tones.

"They're going to skin Rufus!"

She slapped him across the muzzle and tried to shake him by the
shoulders, but he was too large to budge.  "Stop it, Vincent!  Where
is he?  Where did they take him?"

He took a few steps back and dug his claws into the sides of his head,
shaking it. "I don't know... I don't know..."

He shook his head a few times before his eyes fell on me, and he
jumped, as if startled from not knowing I was there.  I'm not that
short, blast it.  He strode across the room and crouched, his eyes
wide with fear.  He was really freaking me out now.  "You... Virmir,
please, you've got to help him!"  He was nearly begging on his hands
and knees, and I took a step back, realizing I was still clutching my
grandfather's robe in my claws.  The fabric draped to the floor and
over my toes.  It was so smooth and comforting... I just wanted to
wrap myself in it.

"Vincent," Vale said as she put a claw on his back, "we'll find him...
Come on, let's go.  We'll need your nose."

"R-right," he stammered.  He stood and took a deep breath.  The two
then strode towards the door, the dhole drawing her blade as she
slowly opened it.  I bunched the white robe up and tried to stuff it
into the pack at my hip.  There was no way I could leave it.  It was
too large to fit completely, but the cloth protruding from the top was
not distracting.

Vale gave us the 'all clear' sign and we followed her into the hallway.

Ugh.  One more to go.

----

I was convinced the pig was dead.  Vale had a great deal of trouble
picking up his scent and it seemed we were beginning to go in circles
with all the dismal hallways looking the same.  Vincent tried his hand
at tracking, taking deep sniffs of the air whenever our squad leader
did so, but never catching anything she didn't notice first.  I don't
think he knew what he was doing.  What a moron.

But his enthusiasm was undying.  I don't think he had heard the
bone-chilling squeal right before we found him.  Neither Vale or I
could tell him.  So we continued fruitlessly searching the empty
halls. Ducking into doorways, dodging the occasional plant creature
that roamed the dark-stoned corridors.  We were going to find him one
way or another...  I never would have expected such a display of
comradeship from the hyena.  Could he not survive without his verbal
punching bag?  Was there something more to the nagging bickering those
two constantly engaged in?  I didn't quite understand it.

And the structure of the tower was infuriating.  It didn't make any
sense.  It seemed more hallways than anything else, intersecting at
odd angles and looping back on one another.  The blue glow continued
to permeate the bottom few rows of bricks lining either side of the
floor.  By then I didn't care what any of it possibly meant.  I hated
to see Rufus go, but we weren't getting anywhere fast.  It was time to
leave.  We had done all that we could...  I nearly mustered the
courage to demand just that.

Then we heard another squeal.

All of our ears stood on end.  This time it was much closer.  We stood
in a hallway perpendicular to another.  A brown boar dashed past the
intersection, its hooves madly clattering on the stone floor.  I had
never seen Rufus in his fully animal form, but I didn't suppose it
could have been anyone else.  Go figure.

Vincent took a few steps forward.  "Rufus!"

"Shhhh!" Vale grabbed him and threw him against the wall.  A rumbling
sound filled the air, as if a stampede were on the pig's wake.  I
thought it best to join the two against the wall.

"He he he he he!!" The shrill laughter echoed down the corridor, an
entire symphony of screeching singers.  My tail curled between my legs
as I watched no less than a score of the vile plant-and-earth monsters
surge past the intersection after the pig, screaming all the way.  By
the gods!  They literally kicked up dust as they charged, bellowing
their insane war cries with their rusty weapons held high.  If any one
of them turned to their left as they ran, they would have seen us
standing there down the intersecting hall.  But they were so fixated
on chasing the pig, the entire army charged right past us.  I was too
paralyzed to move for a full minute afterward.

Before I realized it, the two were peaking down the hallway after the
surging army.

"Let's follow..."

Oh, blast it!

Trailing an army of insane screaming imps down echoing corridors is
not a difficult task.  We could have ran directly behind them with our
weapons scraping against the walls and they wouldn't have noticed.
Still, we kept our distance and followed as quietly as possible.  It
wasn't long before the square corridors of the underground tower gave
way to a long narrow tunnel of jagged stone, much like the one we
originally traveled through.  Had we left the underground tower
completely?  Indeed, the blue luminescence disappeared with the
hallways, and I was forced to summon a witchlight.  How the pig
continued on through the darkness was beyond me, but it was evident he
had, as the screaming voices of the plant creatures grew more and more
distant down the tunnel.  We could only follow and hope they did not
turn around.  Of course, they made so much noise we would have known
it long before they arrived, but it was still a jarring thought.

And what in blazes were we going to do if we caught up to them?  There
was no way the three of us could fend off forty of the blasted things!
 Blast it!!

Heedlessly we followed the echoing screams down the corridor.  They
moved faster than the three of us, so the gap between us grew by the
minute.  As comforting a thought that was, it also meant that we would
be left far behind if the creatures actually caught the boar.

Then the noise suddenly stopped.  The silence was so unexpected we
slowed our paces to a tiptoe as we  became aware of the noise our own
foot falls made.  After a few bends, the tunnel opened up to a small
room bathed in a familiar pale cerulean glow...  It seemed a dead end
at first, but the rock wall ahead contained a circle of blue crystals.
 Another portal... this one through the wall rather than the floor.

Vale recognized the crystals and immediately barged forward.

"Wait!" I demanded.  I took a look at the crystals as I did before.
These ones did not bare cracks like the others, so there was less of a
risk of them breaking when we traveled through.  Still, we had no idea
what was on the other side of the rock...  Could this be our ticket
out of this subterranean nightmare, or did it lead further in?

"Let's wait a few moments for the plant creatures to gain some ground.
 We don't want to appear right in the middle of them..."

"But Rufus needs us!"  Vincent snarled at me.

I folded my arms.  "He needs us alive."

I could not get them to wait more than a minute.  Blast it, here we go
again...  When we were ready, I sucked in my breath and the three of
us stepped through the liquid stone wall together...

----

I felt the cool breeze flow through my entire body as I did when
traveling through the last crystal portal.  But this time the
experience was doubly strange as I felt as if I were moving forward,
yet my feet were still planted on the ground.  In but a moment I was
thrust out the other end, still standing upright, yet it felt as if I
were atop a carriage that had stopped suddenly (or crashed), and fell
forward on the ground.

Frigid night air welcomed me.  The chirping sounds of the forest
caressed my ears, and the scent of plant life filled my nostrils.
Outside... we were outside!  I clutched the sand in my claws and drank
in the sounds and smells of nature.  The night was freezing and I
began to shiver. Certainly the coldest since my arrival in Metamor.
It was a marvelous experience after being trapped in those horrible
stuffy tunnels for so long.  We were outside at last!

"He he he he he..."

Oh, blast it...

They had us utterly surrounded.  Their eyes flashed in the moonlight
and their earthy draconic muzzles turned upwards in maniacal grins.
They formed a semicircle around us, our backs to a now solid stone
wall.

My hackles rose and my lips curled in a reflexive snarl.  I stood and
spread my arms wide, spilling the energy I had gathered out into my
palms.  A brilliant crimson orb appeared in each, bathing the dark
forest in a bright orange glow.  I wasn't going to die without a
fight, blast it...

"This way!"  I ordered, determining the left flank to be thinner than
the right.  I charged at the little monsters at full speed, Vale and
Vincent on either side, brandishing their swords.  Oddly, the
creatures did not charge back, but simply stood there.  I thrust both
of my hands forward and fired both burning spheres like cannonballs.

"Eeeeeeee!!!"  The explosion tore them apart, throwing their bodies
into the air, wrapped in flame.  The dhole and hyena morphs cut
through the rest, hacking the vile little monsters out of our way.  In
but a few seconds we had smashed through their line and dashed like
mad into the forest beyond.  By the gods, I couldn't believe we were
still alive...

After some five minutes of sprinting, we realized we weren't being followed.

"Why aren't... they following us...?" Vale tried to ask in gasps,
fighting back her tongue as it tried to roll out of her muzzle.
Vincent and I were in no better condition.  Our run crumbled into a
fast paced, limping walk.

"They... didn't get Rufus, did they?"

Vale shook her head.  "No, I didn't see him."  I didn't see him either.

The chill began to cut through my panting and I wrapped my cloak more
tightly around my body.  I wondered if I would grow a winter coat of
fur?  Being half animal was so strange...  I watched my breath snake
out of my muzzle in the October night air like a ghost.  "Cold..." I
realized.  "They're plants.  It's too cold.  They're dying..."

The triumphant moment was short lived.  Vincent looked around.  "But
where is Rufus?"

We stopped and I looked up at the unfamiliar black outlines of the
trees.  The stars were mostly hidden by clouds, and the moon peeked in
and out from behind them as well.

"... And where are we?"


-- 
- Virmir
http://virmir.com