Part IV. Bloodward (cont.)
Drystan charged after the tabby cat, leaving Sacha and Coord to hammer their way through the killing field. The creature had scampered off to the far side of the bailey and had curled itself up on the doorstep of the chapel, tucked behind the keep and seemingly the only building not utterly decimated by the fire. There were at least a dozen more skeletons drawing themselves up from the layer of dust on the ground like puppets whose dusty strings had finally been tugged, but as they rose they aimed themselves towards the Inferi that were steadily cutting a wide swath up to the gate of the keep. It was the nature of a killing field to direct its wrath towards those who closed upon its maker, and its maker was somewhere in the crumbling tower they were fighting towards.
He came to kneel beside the cat which looked up at him with empty eye sockets and mewled once again with a pitiful, rotten throat. Up close he could see that the thing was just as much a slave as the rest of them, made to exist well beyond its death by profane espiri magic that bound it to a purpose it did not want. As he touched its head the icy teeth of the magic trapped inside it bit into his hand like a striking snake, numbing his entire arm in an instant in an effort to force him to let go. Hissing and swiping at him with decayed paws the cat struggled to free itself from his grip around its neck but nothing it did could stop him.
Repeating the very first words he had learned in his Inquisitor training, he whispered, “Saor in seo animae Deireadh profanis.”
With a remorseful tug Drystan pulled the creature's head apart from its body and set it free. The cat still managed one last thankful purr before it fell slack, glad to finally be granted a lasting peace.
The killing field was torn asunder the moment the cat perished. No longer driven by the locus the skeletons went slack and shattered into a mess of disjointed bones, scattering about in the dirt like discarded playthings. In his hands the corpse of the cat grew warm as flesh and bone liquefied into a black, brackish tar that pooled on the step of the chapel and seethed for a moment before finally evaporating into a fine white ash.
Drystan got to his feet and a dozen short bones tumbled away from his chest. He finally noticed that the skeleton hand had never released its grip on his throat, it had just ceased trying to squeeze the life out of him when he cut it free of its arm. He looked back over at the keep's gate and saw Sacha and Coord standing there dusting themselves off as if they had done nothing more than take a stroll through a windy courtyard.
Grinning up at her superior Sacha remarked, “That was refreshing. Nothing like making Erathi work for a change!”
Coord rolled her now-normal blue eyes towards the sky and shook her head. “Sometimes you pain us, Sacha.”
Sheathing his sword Drystan walked over to join them, sparing a moment to be amused at how Sacha was utterly dwarfed by the elder Inferi when they stood side-by-side. “Now what?”
Like a striking hawk Sacha tossed her mace into the dirt and grabbed Drystan's left hand, pushing his sleeve up to his elbow. Before he realized what she was doing she drew her sword across the back of his arm, cutting him just deep enough to let blood flow freely without damaging his muscles. He swore at her in shock as he felt the steel bite into his flesh. With an unceremonious and harsh pull she hauled him forward and pressed his bleeding arm against the empty air within the keep's arched gateway.
With another yelp of surprise Drystan felt his skin strike something burning hot and solid even though all he could see was a shadowy space between the entryway and the iron gate recessed three feet into the arch. A moment later an intricate vine-like design began to spread outwards from where Sacha held his bleeding arm firm against whatever was standing in their way. The larger the pattern became the more light-headed he started to feel as the scarlet liquid of his life was sucked out from his body to fill up the ever-expanding pattern.
Seeing the color fade from his skin Coord slung one arm beneath his shoulders and propped him up. “Do not try and pull your arm away. If you break the connection now you will never get the blood back.”
Drystan barely registered Coord's words in his ears as he felt the steady beating of his heart cease to come from within his own chest but shift to pulse within the ever-expanding pattern that was consuming the whole of the keep, foundation to tower top. Vines of his own blood stretched up and outwards, digging into the fractured and blackened stone of the keep. Like something alive the vines began to tug and chip away at the false image that shrouded the true keep like the roots of a tree growing through the cracks in a stone wall. He wasn't certain whether or not he was hallucinating but it looked almost as if massive chunks of it were falling away and shattering into ash as they struck the ground all around where he stood rigid against Coord's armored torso.
Piece by piece the true facade of Nighttyr Keep became visible. It was hardly as ruined as it looked without the bloodward in place. In fact, it looked as though it had been repaired over the years, though most of the lower levels remained vacant and still scarred by fire. The topmost floors of the towers were burning bright with activity, a strange blue-green light throwing long ghostly shadows out over the billowing fog as it rolled along past the keep and out to the eastern moors.
A bloodthirsty shriek echoed out of the topmost tower as the vines peeled away the shroud hiding it from the world. As the last of the illusion shattered the tangle of blood-woven vines began to shrink rapidly, retreating back along the lines they had traveled along until they reunited with his flesh. He started to feel warm again, and though his skin burned Sacha continued to hold his arm fast against the barrier until the last drops of his blood returned to his body.
Releasing his arm Sacha balled up her fist, reeled back, and slammed her armored gauntlet against the last remains of the bloodward. It exploded into a thousand shimmering pieces that scattered to the breeze and vanished, revealing a solid oaken door in place of what had once been an iron gate. It was the oaken door against which his arm had been held, pressed fast against a tanned hide of pale and hairless skin stretched across the door and pinned there in a jagged human outline by horseshoe nails.
Thrashing his way out of Coord's grip Drystan's stomach churned fire as he reeled away from the door, realizing exactly what the hide was. There were magics similar to it in espiri tomes, but none capable of shrouding a place so large for such a long time.
At least none anyone had spoken of until that moment.
“That's him, isn't it.” Drystan doubled over and hung his head between his knees for a moment, sucking in a few deep breaths of cool air to still the boiling sensation in his chest. “That's why you needed my blood. That skin, it's my...Junan's mercy...”
“We will place him to rest properly once we have finished what we came here to do,” said Coord with a quiet gentleness, gripping the large iron ring of the door and shoving it inward with a grunt of effort. A wall of stale air greeted her and she sneezed. “Call for your horse. What lies beyond here will be worse.”
Gathering up his stomach and his sword he stood up erect and shook his head. “Worse than finding out my father's skin been a door knocker for an espiri witch for seventeen years?”
“Much,” replied Sacha with a nod.
Grinding his teeth together, Drystan slung his foot forward stepped through the doorway, slamming his heel down hard enough on the stone to send echos resounding throughout the first floor. “So be it.”
YOU ARE READING
The Great Pandemonium: Nobilitas Obligat
Fantasy“Care to find out why you're a fatherless son of a bitch?” That was the question posed to Drystan the night before he was to again swear his undying loyalty to the Church of Junan and join the ranks of the Inquisition, tasked with investigating, hun...
