The Umbral Messiah Pt. 04

Sari held the candelabra up, looking at the base. "It has a socket and a notch like..." She turned back, facing the fireplace. The embers were dim and cooling and she ignored them, looking at the flat tiles of the fireplace, while Rana pouted.

"I have a socket and a notch, but you don't feel me up..." she muttered, as Sari found an indentation with the same pattern. She pressed the candelabra into it, then twisted it and heard a grind and a click. The inside of the fireplace smoothly slid inwards, revealing a narrow tunnel and a set of stairs.

"A secret tunnel!" Sari whispered.

"I also have one of those," Rana purred.

Sari glared at her.

"I'm a succubus, do you want me to apologize!?" Rana scowled, then vanished with a ping as Sari scrambled over the embers, careful to not touch them, and then started to clamber up the ladder. She emerged into a narrow stone passage that, when opened, swung into a corridor that looked out over the library, with an almost direct route to the laboratory, the door of which was closed, but not barred, locked or guarded.

Sari made sure she had her sword in a firm grip as she stepped out and started to creep forward. She came to the door - and heard a soft hissing sound and Charloette crying out. "Stop! STOP!"

Sari kicked in the door and three things happened at once.

A necromancer, standing in the room, jerked his head around and thrust out his palm. A bolt of magic slammed into Sari's chest and enveloped her in a wave of cold, freezing ice. It clung to her arms, locking them in place.

The ghoul, who's undead cunt had been firmly impaled by Tanner's thick, throbbing cock, jerked her hips off him. Her hair covered her face and she hissed, softly.

A shimmering field of energies at the end of the laboratory dropped and Lord Menelag emerged, without a single care in the world.

Sari strained against the ice that locked her in place as Lord Menelag gaped in shock - and then snarled. "Necromancer!" He boomed, then thrust out his finger, speaking a word in a tongue not spoken aloud for five centuries. Power lashed out and the veins inside of the Necromancer's body unwove themselves from his muscles in a single grotesque spasm of muscular trauma. As his blood exploded across the room and his bones shattered, the ghoul hissed and sprang forward. Lord Menelag, being a wizard, had defneses. But when he turned and began to speak them, the ghoul jerked up his arm and clenched its fist.

A crossbow bolt appeared, as if by some conjuration trick, in Menelag's shoulder. His eyes widened and his spell fuzzed out before he could cast it.

The ghoul's claws flashed. He sprawled.

The ghoul sprang through the doorway into his laboratory.

And Sari, focusing, exploded fire through the ice surrounding her with a grunt. It shattered as Chatloette screamed. "UNCLE!" She scrambled forward, her own manacles shimmering out of existance as the necromancer finished dying. She clutched Menelag's head to her lap as he choked and coughed and gurgled - blood streaming through his lips. Magic flowed through her fingers - but Sari could see that it wasn't enough.

"My d-dear one..." Menelag choked out, then coughed. "You can't...you..." His eyes closed and his head lolled backwards. Charloette, her eyes glistening with tears, held him against her chest, careless of the blood soaking her body. Sari stood next to her, mutely, stupidly, unable to think of what to say or how she could help. Then Charloette lifted her head, her eyes blazing with rage - and then turning, instnatly, into fear. Horror. Sari saw why, following her gaze, to see that the laboratory had a small nested plinth that had held the Chanti Crystal.

Had.

The window was open.

"The ghoul. She took the crystal!"

Sari didn't need to hear more. "I'll get it back!" she shouted, then sprinted towards the window. She saw it looked out over a narrow lip of stone that itself was the edge of the roof. He could see the ghoul perched on the rooftop beyond the wall of the manor - she had leaped the full distance, and dropped almost twenty feet straight down and landed without a single sign of harm. Rana appeared next to Sari, then stuck her head through the wall. She jerked her head back.

"I have an idea, you won't like it!" she said, as Sari groaned.

"Great, great, great!" she said, then grabbed onto the lip of the window. She scrambled out and almost pitched straight over the side of the narrow ledge. She grabbed onto the curved roof behind her to keep from falling forward, then hissed through gritted teeth. "Okay! What's the idea?"

"Look up and left," Rana said.

Sari lifted her head and looked left - and saw that Rana was standing on a scaffold clad crane. Some construction was going on near Menelag's manor and she was patting the side of the crane affectionaly.

"Oh no," Sari whispered.

"She's starting to flee!" Rana shouted.

Sari saw the ghoul had just finished tucking the gemstone against her hip, lashing it down. It radiated a pale purple glow and left behind a string of glittering sparks - a trail that would fade over time, but would give her some grace. Some. Not a lot. Sari gulped, then held out her hand - purple flashing. She hit one of the levers on the crane and sent the cranks whirring and spinning. The crane swung around and the long, dangling hook flipped out.

Sari jumped.

The crane's hook and her intersected. She caught it and grunted as her arms jerked - and the momentum sent her swinging around, jerking the crane the other way as she released - sailed, then dropped down, landing and rolling right where the ghoul had been. She came to her feet, panted, and saw that the ghoul had leaped from roof to roof - landing on the balcony of a house that was lit up with torchlight. Sari ran, leaped, and landed, coming to her feet and seeing a bedroom. A man and a woman, both naked, were gaping at her, and the woman screamed.

"Ghoul?" Sari gasped out.

The man pointed his finger at a door - which made Sari want to smack the side of her head like a fucking idiot. The door had been splintered inwards with a single swipe of a powerful claw. She sprinted down the corridor, and came to a shattered window. The ghoul had squirmed through the narrow fixture and...she leaned her head out and saw that the ghoul was clinging to the trelis on the side of the wall - and then she leaped away, into open space. But rather than falling to the hard pavement below, she thrust out an arm and launched a crossbow bolt from her arm.

This one had a string trailing it. It thudded into the wooden curve of a watchtower - guards within pointing in shock - and the ghoul's moment turned into a sweeping arc, dropping her on a roof about fifteen feet away, in an awkward angle for a jump. Sari scowled. "Fucking..." She drew her sword, tossed it up, caught it like she was about to throw a spear and hurled it at the watchtower. The tip bit into the wood, crunching in deep and she blasted that point with a quick jolt of freezing ice.

"What are-" Rana started.

"You won't like it!" Sari shouted, backing up, then sprinting forward. She sprang out into the open space, her shoulders scraping against the sides of the window. She landed on the sword - felt it bending - and leaped off it before it broke. She landed on the roof, barely, her heels jutting into space, then snapped her palm back. The ice melted and her telekinesis yanked the sword out and slapped it into her palm.

Rana appeared next to her, snarling. "If you die, your father is going to KILL me!"

Sari ignored her, sprinting to the end of the house and saw that the ghoul had dropped down into an alleyway and had rushed towards a warehouse. In their dizzying flight, they had traveled from the high hill where fancy homes were to the harbor district. The ghoul slipped past robed figures - which parted to let it in through a door - and then moved themselves in the way again. Barring the passage. Sari knelt down on the roof and looked down at the warehouse.

She whispered. "Well, I think we found their destination," she said. "Now we just have to get in there."

"But how?" Rana asked.

"I have an idea," Sari said as she watched for more patrols - and saw that while down here, the servants of the necromancers were not flaunting heavy armor and broadswords. They wore nice, concealing robes. The kind...anyone would wear.

"Oh come on, that can't possibly work," Rana muttered.

***

One Eye scuttled into the warehouse. Within, the Black Walkers who had been a part of the secondary attack waited, and they withdrew from her with expressions of disgust and fear. She ignored them, pausing at the hatch in the back of the warehouse, which she opened with a twitch of her hand and then swung down. The place down here was a warren of old tunnels and sewer systems that interlocked and wove together in a dizzying confusion that pretty much no one could understand. But she did. She followed them happily, crawling along the walls and ceilings when it was easier, coming deeper and deeper, until she came...

To him.

The Corpse King.

Her soul was drawn to him like a magnetic filing was drawn to north. And so, when she entered into the chamber that he had chosen for his own beneath Shandil, she felt nothing but joy. She didn't know how he had managed to enter this place without the city being aware - the Black Walkers had used trickery and guile and some birbes to get to this place. But once they had carved it out...once her mission had been done...the Corpse King was already here. Her master. Her being. Her one and all.

"Ah, my One Eye," he said, not looking away from his work. It was unassuming and terrifyingly impressive all at once: Slabs of black stone in the middle of a room of crude dirt, carved out underneath the city by magic rather than with hands. The slabs had not been there before - there was no sign of any similar stone anywhere else. And as she watched, the Corpse King held up a hand and clenched it - and another stone...came into being. It was as if tiny sparks of pure darkness had appeared and then begun to shrink inwards, collecting together like quicksilver in a puddle, but it was blackness.

Once it had formed into a mass, it chiseled itself into stone, and then crunched into place, forming the next part of his design.

"You brought the crystal," the Corpse King said, turning to face her.

She drank him in with her eye, sweeping it up and down his body. She remembered only faintly her tastes in life - and she knew, even then, part of her would have been drawn to him, purely for the challenge of it. But there would have been disquiet then. Disgust. But she was his now, in totality and completely, and so, she loved him without care or reservation. She loved his tall frame, built of slightly different parts. She loved his muscular shoulders and his not-quite-matching abdominal muscles. She loved that his body was both female and male, stitched together from all those parts - he had breasts larger than hers, and he had a cock that could rival a horse. He had orc parts and human parts and even dragon parts, all stitched into his body, to make his immensity.

The Corpse King plucked the crystal from her hand as she held it to him, then set it on a plinth of black stone. He purred, softly. "Go. Defend the exterior of this place. Prevent anyone from entering and I will...reward you."

One Eye jerked upright, her eye widening excitedly.

"Yes. Like that." He grinned at her with tusks and fangs. Then he turned and walked away, his msucular buttocks making her drool. She watched until he was gone - and then she started to crawl back towards the entrance of this part of the tunnel system. She perked her ears and sat perfectly still. The still of only the undead.

And faintly, One Eye could hear a voice. A single voice, soft and whispering.

"Stop whining."

Then, after a short pause.

"Yes, you are whining! I-"

A sigh.

"I...wait, who's there?"

One Eye had already started moving. She sprang from the shadows and the robed figure, the intruder, cried out and started to draw a weapon - but the weapon flew from her hands as One Eye tackled her backwards. They both tumbled and rolled down the irregular incline of the tunnel, coming to a stop with One Eye atop her, slashing with her claws. The claws bit and tore - but into thick robes and not into delicious flesh. The woman actually barely fought, and One Eye grinned wickedly. Easy. Easy fight.

She ripped the last of the robes away, then lifted her claws.

The woman, with her arms now freed by her robes, punched One Eye in the jaw.

Hard.

So hard, in fact, that One Eye saw nothing but sparkles and white flashes as she stumbled backwards. She shook her head - and realized her head was lolling backwards. Her neck had snapped. She focused and the void energy in her body crunched her head back into place as the other woman rushed at her with a roaring bellow. They smashed into one another again - tumbled again, and this time, it was One Eye who was on her backfoot. She tumbled, crashed, sprawled, and then felt blows smashing into the back of her head, her shoulder, her spine - hammerblow impacts that stunned her.

How can she be this strong!?

She wriggled, squirmed, dislocated her thigh to pop free from a grip, and then rolled away. She came into the light of the Chanti Crystal and the woman she had been fighting sprang into the glow. She had drawn a dagger and was holding it in a revsese grip, ready to slash, thrust, twist and turn. One Eye paused for a moment to look her over.

The woman was pale, with dirt common purple eyes and red hair, her face fierce and smeared with dirt and streaked with blood. She looked tired - but determined. She looked delicious. One Eye slowly slid her tongue out, licking it along her face with a happy slurp and she hissed. "Pretty..."

The woman blinked.

She cocked her head.

She opened her mouth. Closed it.

Then, softly, she whispered. "...Hecate"

One Eye froze. Her brain felt as if it was buzzing quietly.

The girl stepped towards her. She lowered her dagger and said, slowly. "Hecate Stone Eye? That...that's you?" She whispered. "Oh by the Dragons, what have they done to you?"

The buzzing in One Eye's head got harder. Harder. Harder.

They say it's like going to sleep.

It's not like going to sleep at all.

They say that you can make peace, right before the end. They say it's like going to sleep.

They're wrong

It's not like falling asleep.

It's not.

Dying is like dying. And there's nothing else even remotely like it.

And the memory of dying exploded through One Eye and she let out a scream. A scream that went on and on and on as she clutched at her head, her spine arching as the howl echoed throughout the catacombs. It came to the scriptorum of the Corpse Lord, who lifted his eyes and frowned. It came to the barracks of concealed troopers. To the vampire knights lurking in their buried coffins, waiting for their moment in the grand plan. It consumed the world - before the ghoul collapsed to the floor in a limp rag.

Sari, her ears ringing, gaped down at her. Rana shouted at her, her voice audible despite the ringing: "We need to grab the crystal and go." Sari shook her head, grabbed onto the crystal...then grabbed onto the ghoul. She was painfully light, despite her size. Sari flung her over her shoulder and started to sprint away. Rana gaped after her, then threw up her arms.

"What! The! Fuck! Are! You! Doing!?"

Sari ran into the darkness and the caves as, in the distance, alarm bells rang and swords were drawn.

The Corpse Lord closed his spellbook and frownd.

"Interesting," he said. "That was very interesting."

TO BE CONTINUED