Desoul Bk. 02

Karyn stood in her black winter grab, arms folded over her plump chest as she leaned against a frozen tree, her eyes were quiet orbs of blue ice as she surveyed the scene. Brianna stepped passed her silent daughter, her own brilliant blue eyes widening in shock as she fell to her knees in the snow.

For a hundred feet around, the trees were charred and shattered like slivers of glass, the area snowless and decimated. In a shallow crater in the center of the carnage was Blade's lifeless body. The shirt on his back blasted into tatters, the blade of his magical sword shattered to dust. The whole area was strangely warm, and Karyn rubbed her chin as she looked around "Its safe." she said softly.

Blade was sprawled out, but his features were quiet, serene. It seemed as if he had just laid there and went to sleep, but the devastation told a different story. Karyn turned and walked silently along the diameter of the battlefield, but she couldn't find any sign of tracks or life. She refused to believe that her father simply went for a late night stroll and magically exploded. She could hear the shouting of the others. Her mother had moved to the center of the crater and sat on her knees, cradling the upper part of her lifeless Master's body as Spike, Grote and Conrad stopped at the edge, hanging their heads in silence.

Luna showed up next "Ya big dummy. Breakfast is getting cold!" she said with a smirk, her features turning serious as she looked to the three men "He's okay isn't he..." her words trailed off as Spike silently shook his head. Luna began to tremble, tears immediately bursting from her eyes as Spike pulled her body to his, hiding her face in his chest.

"Don't look Lunari, don't look." Spike whispered sadly. As Luna sobbed loudly into his chest. Grote turned and began circling the imposed clearing as well, soon joining Kirah and Karyn on the opposite side of the others.

"Not a fucking thing." Grote said softly to the other two, confirming what Karyn had already seen for herself. Kirah merely nodded in agreement, about that time, they could hear Elise, a single shriek pierced the quiet morning as Conrad tried desperately to hold his mother back, the last to discover the body.

Karyn frowned slowly, taking the other's displays as weakness as she remained focused throughout "Kirah. You are the best scout I have ever known. Find me something. Anything." Kirah nodded and walked off into the forest, Karyn's eyes shifting to Grote. "You wont find any conspiracies here, Grote. See if you can find anything in these trees, a sliver, some shrapnel, anything that will help us." Karyn spoke with a cold edge that mirrored her father's calm and cool, even when the heat was on. Karyn went back towards the house, Conrad gently trying to pull his mother away, but she broke free and joined Brianna, sitting in the dirt as she cried over the body.

Brianna reached out, her expression still neutral as she gently squeeze Elise's shoulder "Don't worry, we can bring him back." She looked up to Spike and Conrad and jerked her head, they moved over and very carefully picked up the body, the hilt of the bladeless sword sliding out of Blade's hand and falling onto the warm dirt below. The two brothers carried their father through the forest, not saying a word as Brianna pulled Elise to her feet, holding her close as she led her through the forest "Don't worry, its going be okay." She whispered softly though Elise couldn't stop trembling.

Brianna and Elise returned to the house with Luna and Spike and Conrad to prepare their spell, Emily had simply vanished into the woods after summoning her wolf as Karyn, Kirah and Grote continued to painstakingly comb the area for clues. Karyn had removed her heavy winter coat and scarf, and now lay in the middle of the crater her father had been found, wearing nothing save her black leather pants, boots and snug fitting muscle shirt, also black. She lay sprawled out, her golden locks pooled all around her head as her bright blue eyes gazed unblinkingly towards the sky. She was in a trance, reading the energy of the area, communicating with the forest.

Kirah was standing across from Grote, both of them examining a badly splintered tree trunk. While it was obvious that something had damaged the trunk, they simply couldn't figure out what or how for that matter. No traces of magic, no shrapnel, nothing of a clue to what caused the trauma, it was if the trees just decided to burst on their own and rot into dry husks.

Back at the cabin, Spike and his mother had carried Blade down into the basement, lying him down on a table in the workshop as Conrad tried to reassure his mother that everything would be fine. "Go upstairs and get the bottle of scotch from the study." Brianna said softly to Spike as she held and examined what was left of the sword.

"Drinking to his memory already? Wont even try the spell?" Spike asked with a brow cocked up, god how he resembled his mother.

Brianna smirked and shook her head "You know how grumpy your father can get after a resurrection, just something to tame the beast."

That being said, Spike walked briskly upstairs to the study and fetched the bottle before lingering in the doorway to the living room, checking in on Elise before returning to his mother with the bottle. Brianna was humming thoughtfully as she walked in a circle around the table, breaking up dry herbs with her hands and scattering them on the ground as she walked before stopping and grabbing another set of herbs.

This time she walked a circle while dropping them onto the table. When at last she had finished, the busy little Queen Bree reached for a dagger and promptly slit the tip of her right index finger before slowly, and very carefully, drawing a magical symbol on Blade's cold forehead and then shoulders.

Spike had moved to the corner of the workshop and seated himself on his father's favorite padded stool, pulling a cigarette from his sleeve before he lit it and slowly leaned back to watch the ritual, an impatient smirk on his lips. Brianna closed her eyes, entering a trance as it were as she swayed her body gracefully, soaking up the currents of magical energy as she lolled her head from side to side, her golden locks draping over her face like a yellow curtain. Brianna chanted and chanted over the body several moments "What happened to you silly Master??" She asked, returning to her normal posture as she reached for the bottle of alcohol, but as she turned to face the body, she quickly realized he was in fact, lying still, very much dead.

"Well what the... What?" She asked herself, smirking as she set the bottle on the counter, her hands moving up to the robe she had been wearing. She promptly removed it, letting it cascade down her tanned shoulders into a pool at her small feet before she repeated the ritual, in the nude. Nothing. "Maybe the energy is blocked?" Brianna blinked, still keeping her focus. "I've done this dozens of times without a hitch..." She said, licking the palm of her hand before she began rubbing the bloody symbols off the corpse of her Master, only to redraw them and repeat the ritual. Nothing.

Karyn opened her eyes slowly, tears welling up and spilling down her cheeks as she as she stood, wiping them quickly from her eyes as she headed off the trail to the cabin, leaving her jacket and scarf behind as Grote and Kirahlan exchanged a puzzled look. Karyn did her best to control her emotions as she approached the woodpile, pulling the large wood cutting axe from the chopping block her father had used. She looked around once out of the corner of her eyes before heading into the woods towards the banks of the lake.

Hours had passed, Brianna was downstairs the entire time, alternating every little variable she thought might change the outcome of the ritual, the strain from the repetitive, ceaseless spell casting taking a toll on her strength, and as Spike would question, her sanity. Elise had curled up into a ball on the couch, ignoring her son, he never left her side, his arms draped protectively around her as he whispered that everything would be fine. Kirah and Grote had returned close to nightfall, holding up in Blade's study as they poured through his occult library for possible answers.

Spike finally emerged, from the basement putting a pot of soup on the stove before he sliced some of the bread from that morning and began making everyone a bowl to eat. Emily was barefoot, but didn't seem to mind the ice under her tiny feet as she approached her younger sister in the woods. Karyn had flailed and split many dozens of trees, stacking a massive pile of the timber beside the lake as Emily ghosted over, her purple-hazed eyes glancing over the wood. "Daddy isn't coming back. Is he?" Emily asked very simply, turning and heading towards the cabin before her sister could even answer.

It was nearing midnight, Kirah and Grote had shoveled their food down as quickly as possible, a tray in the center of the study was overfilled with cigarette butts as Grote obsessively chain-smoked his way through volume after volume, Kirah's eyes hardly leaving any of the three books that lie open on the table before her. Elise hadn't moved nor spoke, her grey eyes fixed on the fire in the hearth, Conrad still at her side. Luna stood beside Spike on the porch, each holding a weapon at their side as Spike smoked a cigarette, his eyes constantly scanning the well lit forest around them.

"She needs to rest. Get her out of the basement and I will run her a hot bath. She is going to kill herself if she keeps casting the same spell over and over again. Hopefully she is subdued enough that she wont kill you." Luna said to Spike as her tiny hand darted out, snatching the cigarette from Spike's mouth before she took a puff and flicked it into the woods. "Good luck." She said and winked heading back inside the cabin.

Spike headed down the stairs into the basement, Brianna looked ragged and tired, as if she had been up for weeks without a wink of sleep. Her voice was hoarse and raspy as she repeated the spell over and over again, alternating slow and fast each time she started over. Sitting on her knees before the body, she swayed, not because of the magical currents, but because she was fighting to stay awake, the strain taking a great deal of her strength from her.

Carefully, Spike put a hand on his mother's shoulder, one that was quickly slapped away. "You're coming upstairs." he said flatly. "You're going to have a bath and some soup and you are going to rest, he'll still be here in the morning." Spike leaned down and wrapped his arms around his mother who pulled against his grip, weakly trying to fight her way from his grasp.

Any other day, she would have moped the basement floor with her son with one hand while flipping through her copy of 101 ways to spit a piggy, with the other. She mumbled and chanted and she was pulled from the room, finally giving in as Spike helped her into the bath where Luna attended to her. For the next hour, the only sounds in the house were that of a clock in the study ticking away the seconds and the crackling of the fire in the hearth. Elise had eventually fell asleep in her state of shock, her body draped with a blanket and resting in the arms of Conrad who sat with one hand on his gun, his senses on the alert for anything that might happen.

Brianna seemed to be mildly recharged, pleading that she would only try one more time before going to sleep. Had she not been weakened from the day of spell casting she would have marched down there unhindered, the Queen was a sweet creature, but one that was also very dark and strict. She was loved as much as she was feared, which was a lot. The only reason Spike dared to plead with her was due to her weakened state. "One more time." She insisted, Spike nodded and sighed, his mother passing him and going down to the basement.

Spike turned and rubbed his head, Brianna suddenly bursting through the door leading to the basement, the noise causing Conrad and Luna to pounce from opposite ends of the hallway, pistols drawn. Elise was wide awake, but dizzy and confused, Kirah and Grote in the center of the hall, each looking in different directions. "He's gone!! And so are the sword fragments!" Brianna declared.

Spike had rushed down the stairs, returning moments later to helplessly shrug his shoulders. "Where the bloody hell is the body?!" He demanded as the others looked about.

"Nothing could have got past me! I was right here the whole time!' Conrad exclaimed, glancing around nervously, as if the events of the day hadn't been strange enough, they certainly didn't need to add vanishing corpses to the list.

"Daddy is going to heaven." Came Emily's angelic voice from the living room. She was lying on her stomach, nuzzled against her wolf as she watched the fire. "Karyn is taking him there, she is sending him to heaven by the lake."

Brianna's eyes widened in terror as she burst past the others and out of the back door of the cabin, all of the others following behind her with weapons drawn as they ran to the lake. There, at the embankment was Karyn, Blade's body on top of the mountain of wood she had chopped for a funeral pyre. As the others entered the clearing, Karyn looked back, and then set the broken sword in her father's lifeless right hand before climbing down off the pile.

To their horror, Karyn summoned a large ball of fire into her hand, tossing it over her shoulder into the pile of wood, causing it to immediately erupt into a roaring ball of crackling flames and intense heat. Brianna screeched as she rushed passed the others who watched from the edge of the woods, stunned at what was taking place.

Karyn intercepted her mother, as she approached the pyre, knocking her onto her back on the frozen grass. Brianna moved forward tackling her daughter to the ground before slapping her across the face. "What have you done?! What did you do you stupid girl!?" Brianna was furious, the others, even Spike, were too afraid to interfere with an exchange of two of the most powerful members of the Order.

Brianna gripped Karyn's throat, squeezing it roughly, but Karyn just lie there on her back, the intense heat of the fire melting the snow under her as she looked up her mother. "He's dead mother!" She said, Brianna squeezing tighter as her daughter looked up into her mother's eyes, something of Blade showing in her features. Her words serious with an edge of finality to it. "He's dead." Slowly Brianna let go of Karyn's neck, rolling off into the snow where she sat on her knees, face in her hands as she cried out loudly, sobbing inconsolably as one by one the others came to the fire side.

Karyn rose to her feet slowly, her legs wobbly as she looked up at the fire and then her stunned and saddened family behind her. "He was a Blade of Desoul. Anything less wouldn't be dignified. He was a King, a God, he was one of the heroes of our people." She said softly, her tone quickly taking a more stern, scornful edge "He will not be experimented on, he wont have the same spell cast on him again and again until his corpse is bloated and rotted! He is dead, he is our King and he deserves to be treated like one!" Karyn's words were filled with emotion, emotions something she generally kept bottled up, the tears streaming out of her eyes were as rare as a desert rose.

There was a terrible roar from the fire as an explosion came from the pyre, blowing cinder and burning debris across the shores of the lake, as well as knocking the others backwards from the sheer power of the resulting shockwave. The pyre was replaced by a deep crater filled with smoldering embers. In the middle of it was Blade's body, unscathed save for his clothing which was burned off, the remains of his sword glowing a blinding shade of white from being heated by the funeral pyre.

Much to the horror of those watching, a syrupy black liquid began pouring from Blade's very pores, the liquid pooled all around the fallen hero and then amassed into a black blob shaped like the figure of a human. Its body was featureless, just a mass of black who's skin seemed to swirl and move like the currents of an ocean. There was another growl, the face of the blob revealing a mass of black, needle like teeth as it hissed and charged towards the family that had gathered for a funeral.

Brianna charged into the front of the attack, her fists glowing with blue energy as she stretched out her arms, screaming as she bombarded the black mass with numerous shards of ice in what could be described as an ice storm emerging from her small, delicate hands. The black mass didn't even break stride, its gooey body swallowing each of the shards as it charged up to Brianna, striking her with a backhand that sent her flying backwards onto the lake, her unconscious body skidding to a slow halt on it's icy surface.

Conrad and Karyn were next, jumping in the path of the monster as it went after the downed Queen on the ice. Conrad rushed forward in a feint, pulling back at the last moment as Karyn took the signal to rush in, her agile figure closing the distance between herself and the monster as she landed a flawless spin kick to the monster's throat. But her heel merely passed through the black gob, not slowing it's charge as it turned its attention to Conrad.

Snarling, the monster rose it's hands, blasting twin gobs of what looked like black tar at both Karyn and Conrad, the black substance burning into their skin as both fell the ground paralyzed, their blue veins slowly turning black as they were infected by the agent the monster had hit them with. Spike turned and barked something, it was hard to hear. Kirah suddenly grabbed Elise and pulled her backwards towards the cover of the trees as Spike circled around the edge of the clearing, trying to stay out of the monster's range.

Emily whistled sharply for her wolf, charging at the beast as, from the cover of the trees, Kirah and Grote opened fire. Their automatics blazing, each shot cracking like thunder as they unleashed dual volleys into the creature's back, actually slowing it down a bit. Emily stood off to the side of the others, crouched and ready to rush in after the wounded, Luna spaced out some ways and was ready to go as well.

Spike had just reached his mother as the beast spun around, knocking the wolf from it's back, giving him the moment he needed to grab his mother. The creature was well past Conrad and Karyn, and at once Luna and Emily charged in, grabbing the limp, lifeless pair before dragging them back towards the woods, the cover fire from Grote and Kirah seemingly ceaseless.

Spike turned to find the creature hovering over him, its large hand taking the shape of a thick spike as it suddenly lunged forward. Almost like a blur, a thin shaft of light appeared, striking the monster in the head as it howled in pain stumbling backwards just as Blade's naked, charred figure burst into the battle. He had thrown the hilt of the sword and now followed in it's wake, Spike watching in shock as his father dove into the body of the snarling beast, the two of them crashing through the thick surface of ice and vanishing in the freezing water below.

Shaking his head, Spike rushed towards the shore, his lifeless mother in his hands as the ice cracked behind him. He hit the shore and sighed a breath of relief, just missing the last bit of ice as it had cracked up to the shoreline in his wake.

They gathered around the three wounded, Kirah and Elise trying their strongest spells to purge the poison, but no good. Spike, Emily, Luna and Grote lined up at the shore watching the quiet lake.

There was no sound, no movement. Suddenly, some 100 feet from where they stood, the surface of the lake exploded into a shower of ice and water, Blade landing on his back near the shore as the monster began to slowly materialize from the black depths. Grote stood stationary and opened fire, Luna running to Blade's side as Spike and Emily closed the gap between them and the monster, Grote ceasing fire at the last possible moment.