Pandora's Box

Chapter 9: Part III

Drake spun back toward his daughter. The soft familiar features of the father were gone, replaced by a stark mask of decaying, angular flesh. The fallen king's mottled lips curled into a snarl. Sounds of bone cracking filled the air. Pandora watched in horror while the king's hair fell out and his skull twisted and snapped, reshaping into a crown of jagged antlers.

The king's ceremonial funeral crown clanged from the floor and rolled off into the safety of shadows. Drake screamed in agony as emerald fire scorched from within his chest, burn6ing away the skin of his trunk and limbs. A ball of the green fire thrummed beneath the exposed bones of his breast plate.

"What the hell is that?" Malachai shouted. The junior officer drew his dagger from the hidden sheath at his waist. He grabbed Pandora by the wrist and bellowed the question a second time.

The creature's bones creaked as they stretched into mockeries of limbs. When the sickly symphony ended, Drake's new form stood a haunting nine feet. His eyes burned with the same emerald flame of his new heart. A skeletal hand with talons as long as short swords slipped through the end of a tattered sleeve and grasped at the air, beckoning for Pandora to approach.

"That is my father," replied Pandora. "And he wants me to go with him."

"You can't be serious. Look at that thing!"

The princess shrugged free and padded a step closer to the king. "I won't let him leave without me. Not again."

Suddenly, Drake's burning eyes blew themselves out and the steely orbs of the man's true eyes shone clear behind the ruined flesh. Blue-tinged lips struggled for words. "Pandora..."

"I'm coming, faday," Pandora hypnotically replied.

Drake's massive form rippled with spasm. He managed a single word before the emerald flame exploded back in his eyes.

"Run."

Pandora snapped free of whatever spell had nearly delivered her to the dark being masquerading as her father. She turned and ran for the door. Malachai followed, shouting obscenities in between terrified screams.

Behind them—close behind them— Pandora heard the stomping thunder of the creature's steps. Or was it the panicked pounding in her chest?

"You have to ward the door!" Malachai shouted breathlessly.

Pandora began summoning the will into a spell, picturing the sigils in her mind. All she had to do was live for ten more paces so she could touch the door and seal the creature within the House of Sunsets. The beast roared and a deafening avalanche crushed the mausoleum.

A pace away she reached for the banded door.

The door vanished into the darkness, replaced by an orb of golden light.

"What is the meaning of all this racket?" a stern, sturdy voice asked. A wide body emerged from the night outside. Pandora squinted and made out the bushy outline of a moustache.

The watchman.

"Run!" Pandora yelled in his face. She heard a high pitched whistling behind her and dived to her left.

"Now see here, I won't be having no gnnh—" the Drake-creature's talons speared the man through the chest and gut. He stared down in disbelief at the razor-edged claws robbing him of lifeblood. His lantern clanged on the stone floor and the flame sputtered into a wisp of smoke. He struggled only once.

The Drake-creature loosed a celebratory roar and flung the watchman's broken body aside as though it were nothing more than a discarded sack of refuse. Malachai seized the princess under the arm. He spun daringly by the monstrosity and into the twilight. Pandora kicked the door shut, uttered her word of power, and touched the door's frame. A thin sheen of light blue energy rushed over the door, sealing it shut.

"Gods above what do we do now?" Pandora panted.

Malachai collapsed to his hands and knees. "We leave. Now. We find a horse, ride until dawn, book passage to the Ivories, and get as far from that fecking thing as we can."

Pandora startled back half a step as though the response had been a punch. "You can't be serious. That thing in there has already killed an innocent man. If it gets out, there's no telling what amount of blood it may claim."

"Alright then," Malachai said, rolling back into a squat. "I'm all ears. What do you suggest?"

A heavy thud came from within the House of Sunsets. Another thud. And then the clear splitting of stone.

Malachai jumped to his feet. "Sounds like it's coming through the damned wall!"

A keen understanding rushed Pandora in a sudden wave. She knew beyond doubt that her father believed the story of the House of Sunset's first inhabitant.

"No. That wasn't the wall." Pandora swallowed a lump that felt like handful of glass on the way down.

"That was the floor."