The Great Pandemonium: Nobilitas Obligat

Part V: Trespasser

V. Trespasser

What Drystan saw on his way up to the southeastern tower of Nighttyr Keep aged him years with every step.

Beyond the oaken door was a vaulted hall seemingly frozen in time. Nocis had taken several Enkiri and posed them in statuesque positions along the main corridor, places where there had likely had been stuffed suits of armor when the keep was inhabited by sane men. Enkiri were not nearly as uncommon to see in the Empire as they were further north; for hundreds of years they had been slaves to wealthy families, and those that showed even the barest of magical aptitude were taken by the Inquisition to be either bought by Oratios, the only people deemed capable of owning and controlling a magic-wielding slave, or executed outright to prevent revolt.

They were a people short of stature, human-looking until about their thirteenth year, when root-like markings of various earthen tones appeared lining their skin on the outside of their arms, torsos, and legs. Their eyes had a silvery sheen to them and almost always were the same color as the patterns that developed on their bodies. Though short they were remarkably fleet-footed, limber, and deceptively springy; in Whiteshire he had seen an Enkiri barback leap from a crouch up to the open rafters of the tavern's first floor. He had ended that night owing the Enkiri five silver ingots, having been also conned by the man into believing that he could not possibly repeat the feat only to watch him do exactly the same thing five more times, twice with a full tray of empty tankards.

The laughable memory of that time quickly died within him as he traveled with the Inferi through the entry hall of the keep. The Oratio had left each of the Enkiri in various states of having different layers of their flesh removed from their bodies and bones. From the agonized looks on each of their faces they had been very much alive before they were frozen in place and skinned. Whether or not they would be again once Nocis was dead and his spells were released with his soul was something that Drystan did not want to consider. Silently he prayed that whatever magic held them suspended had also killed them in the casting of it; nothing deserved the cruelty of having to wake from that kind of torture.

After that room had come a banquet hall with a ceiling lined by four bat-like imps, pairs of scarlet talons the size of his forearm buried deep into the wooden rafters from which they hung. They seemed harmless enough but they all watched him with a haunting black faceted eyeball set into the crown of their oblong skulls, patient and soulless. Each of them seemed to exist in their own pocket of shadowy night even though magically-fueled candles burned bright along the walls. Every now and again one would shift and he could catch sight of wickedly pointed hooks like those fishermen used hidden beneath their wings like the breast feathers of any normal bird.

Sacha had called them schaden, lesser demons from Pandemonium which seized upon people's shadows and sucked out their souls in their sleep, then burrowed into their bodies to breed more of their kind. The shorter Inferi spoke of them nonchalantly, almost as though coming across such things was as commonplace as seeing a rat in a poorly cleaned larder. Drystan was thankful that they all seemed fat and content enough that they weren't bothering to move and attack-the claws on their feet alone could have skewered a horse.

The corridor leading up to the tower stairwell was lined floor, wall and ceiling in warm, still-living flesh which shivered in terror with each and every footstep they took across it. When Drystan had gotten the stomach to examine it more closely he found that the flesh had been taken from a countless number of different creatures, from humans to Enkiri to horses and pigs, then stitched together with the same kind of sickening magic that bound souls to killing fields.

"By Junan, where's the point in all of this," muttered Drystan as they finally made it to the stairwell leading up to the top of the tower. The flesh-lined hallway seemed to tremble in relief as they ceased walking upon it and instead began to ascend the spiral staircase of solid stone towards their target.