The Umbral Messiah Pt. 16

Sari, Hecate and Charlotte peeked over the lip of some rubble. The ruins of Shandil had been hard fought over, and now the undead army that had beseieged the city for these past weeks lurked in the outer rings of the city streets - leaving the fortifications at the center for later. Palisades and protective foritifications weren't being erected, as most armies would throw up at such a time. Instead, they were centering on the manor home that Charlotte had said was the closest to the ancient Chanti ruins that lurked beneath the city.

"There," Charlotte whispered, pointing with one of her new arms. "That's the manor of one of my uncle's old allies - Lord Galvain. He was the most mad for Chanti ruins and relics, so his manor actually connects to the old ruins beneath the city. If what you read in the Corpse King's journals is accurate, she will enact her ritual to bring down the walls between our world and the Void there, where the mystic powers of the Reliquary are going to be most easily accessed."

"There's a hell of a lot of ugly between us and them," Hecate said, spitting. Weeks of undeath followed by her unexpected resurrection hadn't changed her gruff nature.

Sari shook her head. "What we need is a distraction," she said, her tail lashing.

On that exact cue, horns blared. Hooves began to thunder. Bursting from the smoke that wreathed the city streets came, inexplicably, rank after rank after rank of silver and white clad knights from the heart of Shandil's castle. They had sallied forth at precisely the correct time - and with lances leveled and swords drawn, they smashed into the spread out masses of the necromancer's army. Skeletons shattered and necromancers screamed as they were put in that most dangerous of all positions for a spellcaster: On foot with a knight nearby. Half a dozen were struck down by lancepoint and curved sabers before they had managed to even cast a single spell.

The horses would normally then withdraw and charge again, or withdraw back to the castle, or push on. But the one thing about the army of the undead - no matter how weak links it had in the form of Black Walker mercenaries or squishy, still living necromancers - was that the majority of it was undead. Zombies and skeletons shambled from around the horsemen that had so valiantly charged. They grabbed onto knights, trying to drag them from their horses, to put them beneath their claws and their daggers.

The battle had become a brutal melee.

But at the very least, no one was looking to make sure the perimeter wasn't breached.

Sari stood and grabbed onto Charlotte's hand with her free hand, while Hecate sprang to her feet behind her. They rushed over the rubble as Sari's brain whirled. A knight was dragged from his horse ahead of her and she snatched up a discarded spear and hurled it in the same motion. The zombie that had planned to rip the knight's visor off and bite his face was flung backwards, speared into the wall of a nearby house, while the knight gasped on his feet. He started to stand - then gaped at the sight of Sari and Charlotte.

"Dragons above!" he exclaimed, but Sari ignored him. She leaped onto the back of the horse, which rocked its back and bucked upwards, restive and worried. Sari took the reigns as Charlotte swung onto the back of the horse, clinging with her upper and lower arms - while Hecate dragged the knight fully to his feet. She laughed.

"Don't worry, they're on our side, soldier," she said. "Now, get back in the fight." To Sari and Charlotte, she shouted. "I'll catch up!"

"This is going to get dicy," Sari shouted over the din of the battle. Charlotte lifted her upper right hand, spread her fingers, and fired a blast of fire directly into the skull of skeleton that looked moments away from slipping a dagger into the knee join of an embattled knight. Sari kneed her newly earned warhorse into motion - and the horse, recognizing the command if still unsure about her, started to trot forward, then canter. Sari focused on the route ahead of her, weaving around knots of infantry and swirling, flashing blades. Her forward progress seemed to surge open a line ahead of her - but then as she rounded past a knight slashing down at a collection of zombies, she saw that she'd either have to try and weave between bitterly contested knights and vampires...

Or leap over a blazing wagon, set aflame by some enterprising Shandil warrior who had seen a chance to deny the necromancer's some of their equipment.

Her horse was, by now, focused purely on putting one hoof ahead of the other, breathing heavily, eyes rolling in clearly mounting panic. Sari shouted to Charlotte. "Help!"

Charlotte saw it. She waved her hands and then thrust two of them above Sari's shoulders - her lower hands remaining locked around Sari's hips to keep herself from falling off the horse. Ice exploded from her palms and the fires went out with a fwump. Black smoke roiled over the wagon and Sari felt the horse gather, then leap. It cleared the wagon, crashed down, then kept running, the impact jarring her teeth. Ahead of her was the manor home. The Corpse King stood before it, shrouded by a glittering golden field that was threaded through with lines of thick blackness. Perched before the home was...

Was...

Sari's eyes widened.

That was half a dozen kegs of blasting powder.

"Oh-" she started.

The Corpse King snapped her fingers.

"-shit."

The explosion picked Charlotte and Sari up and off the horse and sent them smashing down, saved from broken bones and worse only by Charlotte creating a similarly powerful force field. Fragments of stone and wood tore into their horse - and into the soldiers and corpses of both sides. Flesh and metal gave way to the terrible force of the explosion, and smoke billowed outwards in a swirling mass. When the ringing in Sari's ears abated, she sat up and shook her head and saw people stumbling through the mass of the battle - humans, elves, goblins, and other Shandil warriors, stunned but still standing. Then the undead began to slouch from the smoke, less effected by the concussive blast.

Through the ringing, she could hear horns blaring. And a familiar voice.

"Retreat! Retreat men! To the castle! Fall back to the castle!" Tanner called out. Faintly, Sari could see her astride a horse, holy blade in hand, waving it above her head.

Charlotte shook her head. She looked around, wildly. "Who was that?" she asked.

"Uh, I'll explain later," Sari said.

"That's Tanner?" Charlotte said, her brain making the connection. "You said he was changed but-"

"Later!" Sari pointed.

Charlotte and her both looked upon the smoldering ruin that had been the manor home that sat above the Chanti ruins. Now, the whole front and upper levels had been blown aside and scattered, revealing a yawning, gaping hole that led straight down into now much disturbed but very familiar Chanti style corridors. The faint glow of glittering light was all that followed after the Corpse King. Charlotte and Sari both exchanged a nervous look. They started to stand, and then saw that the Corpse King had not left the rear undefended. Crawling from the smoke on their hands and knees, eyes glowing like yellow pits, were ghouls. More than a dozen of them, their bladed fingers and leather armor-clad bodies moving like liquid death. They arranged themselves between Sari and the entrance to the Chanti ruins.

Sari rolled her shoulders. Her tail lashed.

"We can't give the Corpse King any time," Charlotte said, her lower hands flaring with ice, her upper hands flaring with fire.

"No, we can't," Sari said. One nice thing about seeing Sari craft a sword of flames or ice out of thin air?

It had given Sari a good chance to study the exact flows of magic and arcane gestures. She made a little thrusting gesture, then yanked a blade of fire from the air, gripping it in her other hand, feeling the pleasing warmth of it as the flames licked between red fingers. She grinned at Charlotte. "I'm pretty resistant to fire, did you know that?" she asked, cheerfully. Charlotte shook her head, looking impressed.

"I take left," Sari said.

"Got it." Charlotte grinned a fanged smile.

The ghouls charged.

Sari ducked under a pair of crossbow bolts and brought her flaming sword up to parry the third as it drove towards her chest. She twisted, then thrust her palm out. A bolt of lightning exploded from her palm, catching a Ghoul in the chest and slamming him into a wall of rubble. Two more sprang at her and she hissed as one of their claws drew three lines of blazing agony along her arm. She twisted aside and brought her sword up in a quick, jerking arc. The blade severed a ghoul's hand, and then the backstroke took the head. The other ghoul skidded away - reloading their forearm crossbow by biting and cocking the bolt back while their other hand slammed ammo in. He pointed - and then grunted as Sari threw her sword into his head with a cast like she was throwing a spear. As the ghoul dropped, Sari spread her fingers and telekinetically withdrew the blade from the smoldering skull.

Charlotte, meanwhile, was wreathed in magic like some living goddess of destruction. Her corrupted - improved, a tiny part of Sari thought - body had gifted her with extra limbs and she was using all four of her options to invoke and release waves of pure magical might. Chain lightning danced between ghoulish bodies as shimmering balls of flame leaped outwards - ruby red blasts that roared and sent dismembered bodies flying. Ice shards and chunks of earth itself worked together to impale, smash, and maul the survivors.

Sari swept her sword to her side and walked to Charlotte as, as the smoke cleared, she saw the dozen or so ghouls had been utterly eradicated. She caught Charlotte's head by the nape of her neck, then dragged her in for a fierce, hungry kiss. Their tongues played together for a moment, and the warmth, the eagerness of Charlotte pressing to her body was nearly all that she could think of...but then Charlotte put her palms against Sari's shoulders and shoved her back. She panted, quietly, her eyes glittering.

"Remember the end of the world, thing?" she whispered. "Not. Now."

"Yeah," Sari said, grinning.

"...later," Charlotte corrected.

The sounds of shambling, shuffling footsteps echoed around them. More undead were emerging from the smoke. Charlotte and Sari jogged away from them and towards the entrance of the Chanti ruins. Charlotte lifted her hand, gathering magical energies, but Sari took her wrist, shaking her head. Her voice, soft, hissed out: "Remember Hecate?"

"Right," Charlotte said. They took a moment to eye the other corpses shuffling their way. "...they're pretty slow. We'll be faster."

Sari grinned at her.

Together, they darted into the shadows and the darkness and the place where the fate of the world would be decided.

***

Deep in the heart of the ruins of the Chanti civilization that lurked beneath Shandil, something began to glow. It flared and flickered, gathering energy. Gathering itself. It could feel the arrival of the Reliquary of the Ninth Dragon. It could feel its own purpose growing. It started to flare. Focusing.

It felt the minds within.

The four minds.

The three Chosen.

It reached out. Tentatively.

Then more firmly.

The time had come.

***

"This place is a lot bigger than I expected," Sari said, quietly. She remembered the bathhouse that she had found before - the ancient Chanti structure beneath the city that had served the first place she could remember where her hints of demonic nature had reared up and made themselves known. Back then, she had thought it had been like many Chanti ruins throughout the Free Coast: Just a room here, a chamber there, maybe some old crumbled corridors, the rest of it overcome by the press of time.

Instead, what she found was something to rival the Chanti puzzle box in the heart of Raorous, spreading outwards in a complex, gridlike pattern that formed a deepening maze - and the signs of the Corpse King's passage were thin to non-extant, leaving her and Charlotte to wander without guide or clue, their pace slowing moment by moment as they walked. Charlotte shook her head slowly.

"It...is bigger than I remember it being," she said, quietly. "Bigger than it should be. Shandil has a sewer system."

Sari snorted. "I know that much, I spent what felt like an eternity down in it."

"We should have intersected it half a dozen times," Charlotte whispered.

A glint ahead of them shone around the corner - a flare of gold. The two women exchanged a glance and, remembering the Corpse King's protective shield, hurried forward with blade and spell at the ready. But when they came to the corner, they saw a long, thin corridor lit by more of the light gems that provided the same dull green illumination for the rest of the corridors, but no sign of any walking would be Umbral Messiah. Sari frowned and felt Ranna trying to crawl up into the back of her mind. She forced the demoness back, striding forward into the corridor. She sniffed and caught the faintest tingle of ozone, as if a lightning bolt had touched down here.

"Something weird is going on," she said. "Hopefully the Corpse King is having as hard a time of it." She smiled, wryly, at Charlotte, who chuckled.

They came around another corner and stopped up short. Standing before them, glittering and glowing, was the shape of a person. Whether man or woman, human or elf, it was hard to say. Their outline blurred like they were being seen through etched glass. Glowing white light throbbed from their center and radiated throughout the corridor. Charlotte reached out with one hand, as if to touch the glowing figure, but before her finger could press to it, the figure slid back and away, skimming above the ground with their toes just barely touching it.

"Welcome," a musical voice came from everywhere at once - it did not merely come from the figure, but rather seemed to echo off every wall. Sari wined at the overlapping cadence of the voice. "I am the Keeper."

"The Keeper?" Sari asked. "The Keeper of what?"

"Of the last relics of the Chanti," the Keeper said. "Of their history. Of their lore. Of their great works. And of the Chosen." They inclined their head of glowing, golden light. "Welcome, Chosen."

"You mean..." Sari stepped a bit ahead of Charlotte. "I'm...the Umbral Messiah, for certain?"

"You are the Chosen," the Keeper said. Then their body, faceless and eyeless, turned to Charlotte. "But so is your enemy. The one that walks wreathed in void magics and the bodies of others."

"The Corpse King," Charlotte said, quietly.

"Just so," the Keeper said. "I am speaking with her - and with the last of the Chosen. The one untouched by the void, despite her time immersed in it."

"Hecate," Sari said, identifying the other woman. "She must have gotten into the ruins. How is she?"

The Keeper paused for a beat. "She has decided, based on my figure and my voice, I must be female and is attempting to proposition me." She - for her voice was quite feminine - cocked her head, and despite having neither lips nor eyes, looked quite bemused.

Sari snickered. "Is it working?"

"Sari!" Charlotte slapped the back of her hand, playfully.

The Keeper let out a cough. "Come." She turned, drifting forward. "I will explain along the way - the choice ahead of you. The consequences waiting. The truth of the world."

Sari's smile faded, and she followed after, with Charlotte walking with her, arms tucked across her chest and around her belly. The Keeper led them down a set of corridors and into a large, rectangular chamber. Massive statues stood to each side - humanoid figures, their features worn to nearly nothing, their hands lifted above their heads to keep aloft the sweeping ceiling overhead. The Keeper's melodious voice began to drift outwards, causing the statues to glimmer with a greenish light - flickering shapes began to take form around their feet, as if they two women were walking through the ghosts of the past.

"The Chanti people plumbed the depths of the Void - seeking the magical lore of demons and dead alike. They wished to become as great and as powerful as the Dragons," the Keeper said, her voice soft. "They only learned too late that their quests for more and more power had had an effect on the great barriers between this world and the world around it. If those barriers were to ever fail, to ever fall, then...depending on which reached this world first, the world would be ushered into either the Era of the of the Sleeping Dead or the Era of Eternal Chaos." She turned to face them, gesturing left, then gesturing right. Glittering shapes grew from her palms.

One showed row upon row of sleeping, dreamless figures, drifting in sepulcher gray light. Their eyes were closed and their hands were clasped before themselves. The Keeper's voice brought description to it: "The Era of the Sleeping Dead, where all yet living would be given the cold peace of the grave. They would rest away the era, and when the Void once more withdrew, would awaken to a world renewed and reawakened."

"Wait, the Void would withdraw?" Charlotte asked.

"The barriers are natural. As natural as the tides, the sun, the moon, the stars. The Dragons themselves made them," the Keeper said. "What we do and what we do not do cannot fully push them aside - not without considerably more effort than even the Chanti's might."

Her other hand opened and the image that swelled from it was harder to grasp than the first. Swirling chaos. Pinks and reds and golds, intermingling and twisting into new, confusing configurations. The shape of a human hand was barely apparent, an elven face, the limb of some other beast that Sari could not quite identify. All of it wrapped around what appeared to be a glittering flame of gold and green, flaring up from the middle of the universe. The Keeper's words gave it a chilling reality: "The Era of Eternal Chaos. All is made and all is unmade. Demonkind rules the world by whim and eagerness, and they feast upon the sensations denied them by their existence within the Void."

Charlotte bit her lip. "And then there's the third option..."

"The Era of the Shattering," the Keeper said, hands clasped together. "For that was what the Chanti discovered, last of all, before their time came to an end and the cities you know took dominance. The Void is not the source of merely necromantic power and demon magic. It is the source of all creativity. All life. All possibilities. With the barriers they had thrown up, the world was set to wane and wither. Some day, all falls to dust - and the barriers fall then, to breathe new life into the world."

Charlotte shivered.

"You're saying we don't have choices in how to save the world? Just how to end it?" Sari asked, her eyes widening.

"The world has always been ending, Chosen," the Keeper said - and Sari swore that she sounded smug. "That is what worlds do, Sari. They come to their conclusion. The question is always what comes after. Who shapes it. Who controls it? Only someone who has been exposed to the Void and remained intact can direct the energies coursing through this ruin...that's what the prophecy has sought out."

Sari narrowed her eyes. She took a step forward. "And what about Charlotte?" she asked, quietly.

The Keeper looked at her.

Then she clicked her tongue - impressive trick as she had no apparent mouth.

"The wish for something to defeat the Umbral Messiah is just that. A wish. Something dreamed up by a seer who saw where this was going and wished for anything, anything at all, to be different." The Keeper sounded even more smug. "Charlotte here is nothing but an irrelevancy."