The Umbral Messiah Pt. 14

Sari's instincts reacted before she did. She leaped, grabbed, rolled, and pinned the Black Walker onto his back before the man had even had a time to cry out. Her clawed fingers could have wrenched the life from him - but before she could, her tail whipped around and jabbed, stingerlike, into the exposed patch of flesh between helm and mail. The impact caused him to gurgle, wheeze, then relax back onto the floor. Sari blinked her glowing eyes down at him, then whispered. "I didn't know I could do that." She laughed, quietly, as she saw that the Black Walker slept - but not the sleep of the dead. He breathed, slowly, as she looked over at One Eye, who had pinned her Black Walker down and wrung his neck with a twist of her long, dexterous fingers.

"Hurmph," Sari said, before looking back. The portal that led from the tunnels beneath Shandil and the Necromancer's lair was shut - closed down and dormant. She knew enough about such constructions that reawakening the portal would take a phrase, word, or key sigil. Or, if she wasn't in any kind of particular luck this week...all of the above. And considering how Sari's adventure had gone since she had left Master Phenrig's tower...

She shook her head, while One Eye crawled from the cooling body she had perched on, to the end of the broad corridor that swept from the portal to the deeper recesses of the Corpse Lord's home. Sari stepped after her, feeling the cool breeze on her nude body, and started to speak. "So, I don't suppose you were crafted in here and knew...the..." She trailed off, gaping, as she stepped out next to the ghoul.

"No," the one eyed ghoul whispered.

Sari and her stood on a walkway that was nearly ten feet wide, with four foot high crenelations that prevented people from simply going over the edge - needed, because the walkway itself was dwarfed by the vast space that stretched out before and below them. It was like standing in the most vast cathedral one could imagine - done in sepulcher gray and obsidian black. The cathedral's distant floor was covered in stone slabs that, themselves, each bore a different body, each of them being worked on by robed figures that looked, for all the world, like tiny ants. The reek of void magic and embalming fluid used on the industrial scale wafted up, and even from a distance, Sari wanted to gag. Worse, she knew where she was.

"We're in the Halls of Salt," she whispered, quietly. "This is almost half a world away - how the hell did the Corpse King make a connection like that?"

Rana took over, for a moment, to grin. "Oh, it just means more territory for you to conquer, my Messiah."

Sari shook her head a bit. "Suck up." She bit her lip, then stepped away from the edge of the momentous space. Her eyes fell on her ghoul companion, who was shifting edgily back and forth, moving towards the drop, then away, then back once more, as if she wanted to both marvel and recoil. Sari rubbed her chin, then focused. Her skin turned from red to pink and her tail retracted with a soft slurp noise. She drew her fangs back with a focus, and her coal red eyes dimmed to their old brightness - though not their old color, having retained bright crimson irises. She then stood and walked over to the Black Walker she had poisoned.

"I have an idea," she said, nodding.

One Eye cocked her head.

***

Sari and One Eye walked together along the edge of the cathedral of the dead - Sari clad in a helmet and armor and mail stolen from a now trussed up and tucked away Black Walker, while One Eye moved on her hands and feet like an obedient dog, her head ducked forward as she panted softly. Sari herself felt rather uncomfortable in the mail - it seemed to rasp against her skin...something she had noticed while wearing clothes earlier. It was as if her body just wanted to be naked now. She wondered how much of that was her and how much of that was Rana...and how much of it was something new, growing from their fusion...

The chambers they walked past were where the living members of the Corpse Lord's armies dwelled - bunk rooms and chapter houses where the human soldiers and servants sworn to their name worked and trained and...

Sari slowed, her eyes widening as she looked into a chamber bedecked in black silk and spider banners. A very pale woman sat on the lap of an even more pale woman, her eyes wide and growing glazed over. The pale woman was clad in black leather, with black satin gloves and black cavalry boots, her hair a crimson slash against the darkness of the wall behind her. Her fangs were buried in the twitching, glassy eyed wench's neck. Blood dribbled around the puncture wounds - growing slower and slower by the moment. The vampiress and Sari's eyes met.

The vampiress jerked her fangs free and casually let the girl that had rested on her lap slump to the floor like a discarded pile of linen. "Want a turn?" she crooned. It wasn't clear whether she meant herself or the girl - who yet barely breathed. Sari hurriedly broke eye contact and started to hurry away - the vampress laughing after her.

"Don't fight everyone here," she whispered under her breath.

Rana chuckled through her lips. "Oh please. You didn't want to fight that fang mistress..."

Sari shook her head. She clung to the memories of the vampire knights she had faced in battle - remembering their horrible strength and pure viciousness worked a little to dampen her tingling lust. A little. One Eye hissed at her as they came to a double set of doors - which, according to the sign written in Old Arcanic, led towards the Sanctification Chambers - and Sari paused. She heard two voices, reedy and aged, speaking from down the set of stairs.

"Will you be there for the sacrifice, my master?"

"Hah! While the young-" this voice sounded even more wizened and ancient. "-might entertain themselves with the sight of Araxia tearing some living wench limb from limb, it grows tiresome after a while."

"Not just any wench, though!"

Sari saw them now - two necromancers, robed and stooped, starting up the stairs. The one speaking had lifted his hand and was waggling his finger back and forth, playfully admonishing. "The Corpse Lord herself brought her back to us."

Sari felt as if she had been punched in the chest. Her eyes widened behind her helmet and she drew a sharp gasp - and drew the attention of the two Necromancers, who frowned at her intently. "You there, mercenary. What are you doing away from your post? Should not most of your kind be at the siege?"

"No, sir, I, uh, I've been assigned to escort this ghoul," Sari said, trying to sound gruff and official.

"Hurm," the Necromancer said. He looked down at One Eye, who sniffed at the floor. "And...what is wrong with this ghoul? They seem wrong." He strode forward, holding his palm out. Glowing magic flared and Sari realized that he was beginning to examine One Eye with his arcane abilities. Sari had no idea what that might reveal. Her hand dropped to the sword she had borrowed as the other Necromancer sighed.

"Master, it's just a ghoul-" he started.

"No, it's not!" the master exclaimed. "It-"

Sari drew and brought her sword down in the same motion. The necromancer let out a grunt of shock as his hand dropped to the floor - blood gushing into One Eye's face. Sari brought her sword whipping around and took his head off at the jawline, cleaving through it with a brutal crunch. The other Necromancer drew breath, to call out, to shout, to incant. Sari gave him no chance - she thrust with her other palm, fingers outstretched. A streak of blue-white light exploded out and struck his chest, encasing him solidly in ice.

His master hit the floor with a wet thump. Sari strode over, then put her blade to the throat of the other necromancer as he wobbled, losing his balance without any way to move inside of his ice prison - which crumbled and flaked away as the magic that sustained it faded away. He let out a squeak as Sari jammed him against the wall, her sword drawing a thin line of blood from his pale throat. Her voice was low. Fierce.

"Who is being sacrificed to this Araxia?"

"T-The...the Child of the Falcon," he wheezed out. "The girl child, Charl-"

He gurgled as Sari swept her blade across his throat. The necromancer fell as Sari panted. Then, speaking through her, Rana crooned. "She'll be impressed with what you've become, my Messiah."

Sari shook her head, regaining control of her body. "She's alive. Charlotte's alive." A dizzying pleasure exploded through her...and a sudden lurching dread. Charlotte was the key to undoing the prophecy of the Umbral Messiah. Of undoing her. The fear prickling along Sari's spine was similar to to the fear she had felt before - wondering how many of her actions were her own choice, her own free will. How much was just some invisible hand, guiding her? Like some puppet on the strings. She bit her lip...then was startled from her existential disquiet by some very physical disquiet as a crunching, bone snapping sound gurgled out from behind her.

Sari turned and saw that One Eye, using the very lips that Sari had gladly kissed before, was sucking the meat off the old man's detached finger, worrying at his knuckle joint with her teeth, her one good eye focused and fierce.

"One Eye!" Sari exclaimed.

The ghoul looked up at her, then swallowed and dropped the half eaten hand. "What?" she asked, her voice shockingly more similar to her living self at this point than it had ever sounded before in the entire adventure. "I haven't eaten human flesh in days."

"Not comforting!" Sari exclaimed.

"...I can clean up...bodiiiiiiiiiiesssss," One Eye crooned.

"You cannot eat two human bodies!" Sari hissed. She looked down the stairs, thinking. "If there's a sacrificial chamber, and a big ritual to do over it, we can find it..." She whispered. "Come on!" She jerked her head.

One Eye followed after...after she grabbed up the hand.

***

Charlotte Menelag opened her eyes with a slow groan...her eyes widening once she realized that she wasn't in a big comfy bed. No, the comforting sensation of pressure and warmth came from sticky, thick strands of webbing that enclosed her body, cocooning her like a mummy. Only her face was visible to the world and she could see that she was suspended between two brass poles that both were wheeled and attached to a frame that, itself, was attached to her cocoon. She wriggled and squirmed and tried to draw magic into her body - but the spark of flames she managed to summon was so closely confined by the cocoon that it scorched her fingers.

"Ow!" She hissed.

"Ahhh, the Child of the Falcon awakens," a crooning voice drew her attention. A Necromancer in black robes, flanked by a pair of vampire knights in full plate harness approached, their boots clacking softly on the stone floor. "Good. I have come to anoint you for your sacrifice into the realm of Eternal Death." His teeth flashed, yellowed and broken.

"You inhuman bastard!" Charlotte hissed, glaring down at him. "You mean turn me into a zombie! Or a ghoul! Or...or a skeleton!?"

"Please! Would we ever wish to undo the prophecy of your noble line with a zombie?" The Necromancer laughed. "You are a powerful magician in your own right, dear Falcon."

Charlotte's face felt as if it had been dashed in cold water. "No."

"Yes, you shall be made into a glorious Lich," the Necromancer crooned.

Charlotte shook her head. "No, no, you can't! I won't! I refuse!"

"It is already too late," the Necromancer said, his grin growing more wicked. "You have already accepted the magical sacrament into your very womb."

Charlotte opened her mouth.

Then closed it.

Her cheeks burned almost as red as her hair.

"W-Well..." she whispered. "A-At least Tanner and Sari will never learn."

The Necromancer chuckled. "But first, we must fully release you from the false promises of life." He gestured and his two knights strode forward. Their hands took hold of the framework suspending her and began to roll her forward. Charlotte had expected a throat slitting or something equally swift and merciless and horribly unstoppable. Instead, she saw that they were rolling her...towards a narrow tongue of stone, thrusting away from the chamber she had awakened in. Two guttering torches, flaring with a magical white light, flickered to either side of the tongue of stone, lighting her way, and making the dark pit below seem all the darker.

"No, no, no, no, you're insane!" Charlotte screamed, fear bursting in her chest. "You won't! You wouldn't! Please, just...I don't-"

The cocoon was cut free by two swipes of the vampire knight's swords. She fell and balanced on her feet before the precipice. Charlotte whimpered, tears of pure terror burning in her eyes. She tried to remain standing. She actually managed it. She stood ramrod stiff, her voice coming out in a thin hiss.

"Y-You better hope that this raising spell doesn't work," she snarled out. "Because if I come back as a Lich, I am going to rip your spine out."

"You'd be surprised how often I've heard that," the Necromancer said. He made a gesture that Charlotte heard, rather than saw.

A steel boot kicked into the small of her back.

And Charlotte plunged towards blackness with a shriek.

She expected the sudden stop to be fierce and terrible. Instead, she struck something thick and bouncy - rebounded, fell from it, tumbled, caught, fell some more, then caught again. She slowed, skidding, until she was hanging upside down. The impacts had ripped away at the webbing restraining her, so that she was able to begin to wriggle, squirm, tug...and finally, she got an arm free. She used some magic to flare into her fingertip and burst into flames. The light flickered around her, illuminating more spiderwebs, surrounding her in every direction, creating eerie pale white tunnels that seemed to stretch into every direction. She hung from her ankles from yet more webbing - and soon, Charlotte was burning away the webbing around her other arm, then her ankles. She dropped the last few feet and landed with a grunt on her back.

Charlotte lay there, gasping.

What would Sari do? She thought.

Well, Sari would never have gotten to this point. Sari wouldn't have woken up inside of the hull of the enemy ship, in the chamber of the Corpse Lord herself and...been...Charlotte's cheeks burned as she shoved that memory aside. She'd have to explain herself to Sari later. Or maybe never, if she died horribly. That was a sudden upside to all of this she hadn't expected. Charlotte stood - and then froze. She heard something clicking and slow behind her.

Charlotte spun around, a bead of fire bursting to life in her palm. She cocked her arm up, about to hurl it...but the light of the magic showed nothing but the webs, drifting in the faint breezes that drifted down from the circular hole that she had been dropped down. Charlotte licked her lips, stepping backwards. Her heart thundered as she whispered. "Spiders...it wouldn't be giant spiders...the Necromancers can't turn a lich that has been eaten alive and digested in half a dozen stomachs." She shook her head. "Whatever is down here, you must be...aware. You must speak the Common tongue? Or Old Arcanic? Or some necromancer speech?" She looked left, right, then turned around, still edging towards one of the tunnels of spiderwebs.

She heard a soft giggle.

It came from her left.

Charlotte threw and the bolt of fire shot out and struck the cobwebs there, catching and burning merrily. This threw more dancing shadows throughout the room as the fire spread - but...impossibly, after spreading for a moment or two, the fire then began to fade, bit by bit by bit until there was nothing there, as if the spiderwebs had sucked the energy of the fire right up. She heard another giggle - this one coming from her right.

It was girlish.

"Stop playing games!" Charlotte shouted. "I'm not scared of you!"

The giggle came again, more distantly, as if it was trying to tempt Charlotte into chasing it. Charlotte shook her head, slightly, then turned around - planning to duck out through one of the tunnels. She put her hands together, drawing forth another bead of white fire...and the light spilled out and was reflected by eight glowing red slits in the darkness, roughly at her head height. A humanoid figure stood between her and the exit, having appeared as if from the shadows themselves. White teeth flashed with very...very...very sharp fangs.

"You should be," the girlish voice crooned as Charlotte gaped.

The creature blurred forward and stinging pain exploded from Charlotte's shoulder. She stumbled backwards, her arm going limp, her face burning, her eyes filling with glittering lights. She flung the magic in her hand desperately out - and it shot into the ceiling, missing by a mile. It caught and it burned and as it burned, Charlotte fell backwards, and gaped up at the figure standing before her, lit in glittering orange highlights.

The woman was about five feet tall. She had hair the deep dark glossy green of a beetle's wing, and skin the same rubbery-black as a spider's limb. Her shoulders bifurcated, with a second set of arms smoothly emerging below where a human's would be, allowing her to both brush her hair back and put her hands on her hips at the same time. Her breasts were large and tipped with nipples the same glossy green as her hair. Her eight glowing red eyes narrowed around her face, while her fang-tipped smile grew more wicked. Her feet were delicate and naturally arched, a bony protrusion of chiten forming into a natural stiletto heel which thumped against Charlotte's chest, pressing between her breasts as she was pinned down.

"You are going to be delicious," Araxia, the Queen of the Spiders, purred down at Charlotte.

Charlotte whimpered.

The black fingers of the spideress hooked on the edge of Charlotte's blouse, then tore. The thin fabric peeled away as Charlotte's breath caught and her mouth opened in shock as the cool air brushed along her skin. It felt as if every pore of her body was sensitive to every mild change in temperature - and her nipples were the worst of all. The hardened and puffed up as she was caressed by the faint breeze within the chamber, tightening and throbbing with such arousal that she almost went crosseyed. She wanted to squirm and move...but the venom burning in her veins kept her from moving. She was limp as a doll - and there were four midnight black hands caressing her body. Two cupped her breasts, and two more stroked her cheeks. Fingers slid along her lips as Araxia crooned.

"I'm going to fuck the hell out of you," she whispered, huskily. "And you want that so badly. You're soaked." She giggled, then. "Of course, that might be the venom. Might be. Lets make sure." She grinned and then her fangs flashed and Charlotte, despite the limpness of her body, opened her mouth and moaned as those fangs plunged into her neck, her shoulder, her breast, puncturing her skin and leaving tiny red marks - which flared with aching, desperate pleasure as more venom burned into her. She trembled and squirmed, her back arching, her hips bucking as she came from the abuse alone - her sex clenching as she soaked her own panties her pleasure.

"Hah!" Araxia laughed, then started to roll her nipples between her fingers, tugging, twisting. Even this painful use left Charlotte whimpering and squirming. She felt the venom leaving her limbs - her hands tightened into fists.

I can move! She thought. Excitement blazed in her as she lifted her arms, planning to bring them crashing down onto the green topped head of this hateful spider queen - but before she could, Araxia's upper hands lifted from her cheeks and flexed. From tiny, concealed spinarettes in her wrists, the six limbed woman spat white spider webbing against Charlotte's hands and wrists, pinning them to the wall above her head, so that she was trapped. Stuck. Charlotte tried squirming and wriggling, gasping out. "N-No!"