That Horrible Moment Chapter 7
The Next Day
By Donraj
The dawn only illuminated the horrific scene more
clearly.
Rosa awoke to find her hand
clutching Xavier’s. For a moment, that fact comforted her, bringing
back the peace that she had felt as she
slept.
Then she remembered, and
reality came crashing down on
her.
She released the dead hand
instantly, scrambling away awkwardly. Her breath quickened and her pulse
raced as she remembered the vicious battles of the night before. She remembered
her duel with the assassin, the shock of Xavier’s murder, and her futile
attempt at revenge. And after
that…
After that, everything became
hazy. She vaguely remembered some sort of light, but the details of the memory
scattered like pollen in the wind as she tried to recall
them.
Perhaps it had all been a
dream?
She rose, dismissing the
confused images. What did it matter? It would not change anything. He was
dead.
She looked at Xavier’s
still warm body. Grief filled her once more, but the edge was gone. It had
been altered somehow, become easier to bear, less raw, although no less
deep.
As she stood, she realized
that her leg was supporting her without complaint! Her ankle felt fine, and
her many cuts and bruises seemed to have vanished without a trace. She did
not understand it, but she knew, somehow, that Xavier was
responsible.
A single tear rolled down
her cheek. Wiping it off, she turned away. She had to see if anyone else
had survived the
night.
************************************************************************
Gilliam’s awakening
was less peaceful. As he rolled over slightly, he laid on the wound Lanal’s
dagger has left in his side. The pain broke his dark, dreamless sleep like
rock hitting pottery. He sprang into a sitting position, only to immediately
fall prone again, this time gasping in pain. He opened his eyes to see Ellis
staring down at him. His head had been lying in her
lap.
“So you’re
awake,” she said
quietly.
“W-What happened?”
he asked, trying again to sit up. “How did I end up
here?”
“You fainted last
night,” she said as she gently but firmly pushed him back down. “You
should not have been running with those
wounds.”
All traces of the vulnerability
and panic that had been written on her face last night were gone, replaced
by the calm, cheerful adventurer’s façade she normally wore.
Gilliam wondered if he had imagined the stark terror he had seen in her,
or if Ellis was as adept at acting as she was a
juggling.
Another stab of pain drew
his attention back to his injuries. He reached for his side with his left
hand to find that it was tightly bandaged. His right arm was also heavily
wrapped with cloth. Ellis noticed his
movements.
“I cleaned out your
wounds the best I could. They’re bad, but there was no internal bleeding,
otherwise you wouldn’t be here. I did have to cut your shirt off
though.”
Gilliam wondered what he
should
say.
“I, thank you. Where
did you learn how to do this sort of
thing?”
Ellis shrugged
absently.
“When you travel as
much as I have, you pick up a thing or
two.
Gilliam started to say something
else, but a wave of nausea cut him
off.
“Not so fast,”
Ellis cautioned him. “Alberto gave you a drug to reduce the pain, but
it must be wearing off,” She turned her head back towards the entrance.
“Alberto!”
“Where are we?”
Gilliam managed to
croak.
“In one of the wagons.
Now
hush.”
Gilliam began to drift back
into darkness, but it was not the cold blackness it had been. It seemed almost
comforting this time.
Ellis…
***********************************************************************
Gilliam awoke once more sometime
later (he could not tell how long) with a shriek of pain. His head jerked
up and he saw Alberto’s face as the mage knelt over him. Alberto nodded
and released Gilliam’s arm.
“What are you doing?!”
Gilliam
demanded.
Alberto looked at Gilliam
intently, his pure blue eyes
fevered.
“Checking you injuries.
You were lucky, the blade nicked the nerves and damaged the muscle, but nothing
was severed. You should be able to regain the use of your arm,
eventually.”
“Eventually?” Gilliam
asked nervously. “How
long?”
Alberto shrugged. “A
few months. Less if we can find a good
healer.”
Alberto held his thumb and
forefinger less then an inch apart. “It came this close to slashing
the blood vessel in your forearm open!” he said cheerfully. Now, does
it still
hurt?”
Gilliam started to snap at
him, but realized that the pain had in fact faded. He shook his head.
“Good,” Alberto
said. “The opiate is taking
effect.”
Gilliam glared at him. “And
why didn’t you wait until after it did before you started poking my
arm?”
Alberto
shrugged.
“Where’s Ellis?”
Gilliam asked as he looked around the wagon’s interior.
“Outside,” Alberto
said cheerfully. She and Rosa are digging a pit for all the
bodies.”
Gilliam winced despite the
pain-killer.
“How many?” he
asked
quietly.
“Not many of ours,
actually,” Alberto said, oblivious to Gilliam’s distress. “Many
of the guards died, but at least half of them managed to escape when the
goblins came. A bunch of the bandits are dead, and I think that the priest
guy is
too.”
Gilliam closed his eyes at
that last part. He had barely known Xavier, but the young cleric had been
the most comforting person in the entire caravan. He reopened his eyes and
looked back at Alberto as a question hit
him”
“Goblins?”
“Long
story.”
Rapidly, Alberto filled him
in. Gilliam shook his head in disbelief. They had been saved by a pack of
goblins? That was why they had
survived?
“Actually, the old guy,
Hanlon, managed to capture one. I was just about to go out and see it when
you woke up. Do you feel up to
moving?”
Gilliam nodded unsteadily.
Alberto pointed to a broken branch about three feet long that was leaning
against the foot of the
bed.
“We found a stick for
you to
use.”
*********************************************************************************
Gilliam blinked as his eyes
adjusted to the morning light. As he emerged from the wagon, leaning on his
make-shift staff, he saw Hanlon, Rosa, and Ellis standing around a squirming
form lying on the ground. Hanlon seemed completely unconcerned, but whatever
it was clearly had Rosa and Ellis on edge. Rosa was fingering the hilt of
her sword nervously, and Ellis had bow and arrow in hand. She had not pulled
the shaft back yet, but she was clearly ready to do so at any time.
Hanlon looked up as Gilliam
and Alberto exited the wagon. “Ah good, you’re here. We can
begin.”
He pulled the bound creature
to its feet. Gilliam started as he realized that he was looking at a snarling
goblin!
“This is Katoi,”
Hanlon began calmly. “He and I had a long chat last night about his
clan and those bandits. Isn’t that right
Katoi?”
Hanlon had not done anything
threatening, but the goblin flinched at his words. Ceasing his struggling,
Katoi settled down. Gilliam wondered just what Hanlon had done to induce
such obedience in the savage
creature.
“Apparently the bandits
we were hunting have skirmished with some of Katoi’s people, and have
occupied one of their caves as a hideout. This made the goblins very unhappy,
and Katoi’s group has been hunting them for revenge. As luck would have
it, they went after the bandits at the same time the bandits went after
us.”
Rosa
shuddered.
“Who were those people?
No ordinary bandits, that’s
clear.”
Hanlon started to respond,
but Ellis beat him to
it.
“Touten,” she said,
in a voice of utter
hatred.
Hanlon nodded, his face turning
grim.
“Indeed. But how did
you
know?”
Ellis looked at him
coldly.
“Several years ago,
a group of soldiers rode into my family’s camp during the night and
slaughtered every single one of them. I was only a child, but I will never
forget the dragoon that led them, or the red-haired assassin that followed
him.”
“Drake and
Lanal.”
They all turned to look at
Hanlon.
“That is their names.
The one in the armor is Drake, the red-haired one is Lanal.”
He turned to
Alberto.
“The wizard you fought
in the forest is named Chell. The three of them were officers in the Touten
knights during the war, and some of most evil bastards I’ve ever
seen.”
“How do you know
them?” Rosa asked
suspiciously.
“I fought as a mercenary
during the War; I was assigned to the same area as them a few times.”
Hanlon stared off into the distance for a moment, seeming to look at something
in the depths of his
memory.
“They’re
monsters,” he said quietly. “They butchered anyone who got in their
path, slaughtered entire villages to keep the enemy from using them, and
the things they did to
prisoners…”
Hanlon fell
silent.
“How did they end up
as bandits?” Gilliam asked.
Hanlon
shrugged.
“Back then, they nobles
were willing to ignore the way they fought as long as they were successful.
But once it was over, they couldn’t be allowed to continue. They were
probably either banished or arrested afterwards when the Touten were
disbanded.”
“Just what are we up
against?” Gilliam pressed. Hanlon looked at him
gravely.
“Some of the worst enemies
you could find. The small one, Lanal, is a master assassin. He’s adept
at infiltration, and with his demeanor people automatically trust him, until
he puts a knife between their
ribs.”
Gilliam winced and held his
side as Hanlon
continued.
“The one in the armor
is Drake. No one knows where he came from or what he looks like behind that
mask. All I know is that he is probably the most efficient killer in the
world. He comes out of nowhere, is a master with the spear, and is almost
invincible behind that
armor.”
“The third one,”
he continued, “is Chell. On the surface, he appears emotionless, but
don’t be fooled. He’s a sadist, and he loves nothing more then
feeling a person die at his
hands.”
Hanlon’s body
shook.
“He’s the one
that’s haunted my worst nightmares over the years. Some of the things
I’ve seen him do, no, you’re better off not
knowing.”
They were all silent for
a moment.
Finally, Gilliam cleared
his throat and spoke
up.
“So what do we do
now?”
After a moment, Ellis spoke,
her voice as cold as
ice.
“We track them down
and we kill
them.”
Hanlon turned to her in surprise.
“Agreed,” Rosa
said, her tone equally
grim.
“You mean to go after
them after all I’ve told you? Are you insane?! I don’t care how
much you are being paid, it’s not worth
it!”
“Money has nothing to
do with it,” Rosa said, her voice trembling with suppressed emotion.
“I watched a good man die in my arms last night after Drake murdered
him. I can’t walk away, not after
that.”
“This is personal,”
Ellis
agreed.
Hanlon turned to Gilliam,
hoping he would see reason, but he too
nodded.
“We left the Hokuten
because of people like them. I’ve stood by and watched innocent people
die too many times; I won’t let it happen again! If we walk away now,
more people with die at their hands.”
Growing animated despite
his injured state, Gilliam gestured around at the carnage around
them.
“If they are not stopped,
this will happen again to someone
else!”
Hanlon turned to Alberto,
but realized he would find no support there. Sighing, he finally
relented.
“Alright. If you are
all determined to go, I’ll come with
you.”
They looked at him in
surprise.
“You would come with
us?” Gilliam
asked.
Hanlon, his face a stone
mask, looked at
him.
“Those were my men who
died last night, guards under my command, people I lived and worked with.
This is my fight
too.”
A spot of moisture filled
his aged eyes, Hanlon quickly brushed it
away.
“Besides,” he said
huskily, “I stood by and watched too many times
myself.”
All was silent for a minute.
Then Alberto asked a
question.
“So how are we going
to find
them?”
Rosa, Ellis, and Gilliam
all flinched at that. None of them had thought that far ahead. Hanlon, regaining
his composure,
grinned.
“Remember how I said
they took one of the goblins’ homes as their hideout? Katoi here knows
exactly where they
are.”
“You want us to trust
a goblin?!” Gilliam asked
incredulously.
“We trust Alberto,
don’t we?” Ellis pointed
out.
“Good point,” he
conceded.
Crouching in front of the
small creature, Gilliam looked into its red
eyes.
“Are you willing to
help us find Drake and the
others?”
Katoi leapt to his feet.
“I will tear them limb from limb and eat their hearts!” he snarled
viciously.
“I think I am going
to like him,” Alberto
commented.
That drew a slight chuckle
from Hanlon, but, after seeing the dead serious expressions on the other’s
faces he stopped. A new thought occurred to
him.
“What happened to Chell
anyway?”
Alberto just
smiled.
*********************************************************************************
Amid the blasted trees and
burnt underbrush, a charred, blacked figure lay motionless. The ground around
it had been scorched bare, leaving only flame-hardened earth
behind.
Its clothing had been ripped
and partially burned away by the energies that had seared its flesh black.
For several long moments, it was utterly still, then it shuddered as it drew
in a ragged
breath.
Somehow, Chell clung to
life.
He did not seem likely to
stay that way for long. His body had been blasted mercilessly; it was a testament
to Chell’s iron will that he survived at all. But the trauma was too
severe; stubbornness could only hold the darkness back for so long. In a
matter of minutes, Chell would be
dead.
The wizard refused to accept
it. Desperately, he tried to focus his remaining strength. His thoughts flew
back to his early days, to the gentle monks that had taken him into their
monastery and taught him all they knew of the healing
arts.
He remembered how he had
grown dissatisfied with such simple spells, how he had delved deeper, learning
darker
magics.
He remembered how he had
used that magic to murder the kind monks, one by
one.
He had enjoyed
that.
It was those first spells
that Chell needed now, needed the gentle healing energies that could save
him. He called to them, shaping his will to summon forth the magic he needed
to live.
It was no good, the magic
would not
come.
Chell’s magic centered
on the balance between two poles, light and dark, life and death. He had
realized early on that if he tilted the balance in the opposite direction
a healing spell could become a deadly
weapon.
But Chell had thrown that
delicate balance aside, had embraced the darkness, embraced death. And now,
when he needed it most, the light of life would not
come.
Infuriated, Chell screamed
in outrage. Defiant and unrepentant, he used his rage to reach for the other
pole, calling out to the darkness. And the darkness
answered.
Blackness began to crawl
into being around his body, spreading over his form like ink. It engulfed
him, enshrouded him, enfolded him. He could feel it worming itself into his
body, coating his burns, seeping through every pore. He screamed, whether
in torment or ecstasy he could not
say.
He stood, black energy
surrounding him like a cloak. He laughed in triumph, knowing that somehow
he had prevailed. He rested his hands against one of the still standing trees.
The dark aura spread from him and slid onto the
tree.
As the corrupting power swept
over the tree it withered and died. Its leaves fell and its branches rotted.
Finally, the once proud giant broke with a dull crack and fell to the ground,
already
rotting.
Unlike his life-draining
spells, none of tree’s strength flowed into him. That was alright, it
was a small price to pay for the unholy pleasure of killing the once living
thing.
The nimbus of darkness around
Chell began to fade, revealing the necromancer in his tattered robes. All
trace of injury was gone; his flesh was whole and seemed completely unmarred,
albeit a bit gray. He clapped his hands exultantly, then looked down at them
curiously as the made a dry
click.
His hands were nothing more
then fleshless bone. Where the energy from Alberto’s counter spell had
burned him there was nothing left but two skeletal appendages. From the wrists
up his arms were normal, all except the bleached bone at the
ends.
Curiously, he tried to flex
them. The nerveless fingers obeyed his will as perfectly as if they were
still covered with
skin.
Deciding it must be the result
of whatever magic had saved him, he shrugged, accepting the bizarre change.
He rather liked their new appearance,
actually.
He started to walk off, then
stopped as a strange feeling came over him. He stopped and focused his attention
on a point several yards away. A strange sensation swept over him, and his
surroundings simply fell away to be replaced by a new
setting!
He looked around, trying
to regain his bearings. Somehow he had simply teleported across the intervening
distance!
Chell smiled. This new state,
whatever it was, had many advantages indeed. But for now, he would
walk.
He had to find the
others.
*********************************************************************************
Far away, in a dark, lightless
place, Lich watched Chell’s
progress.
And
smiled.
*********************************************************************************
Lanal shut up for
once.
He sensed Drake’s anger
at the night’s events, his rage at being forced to flee in defeat. Lanal
knew he should remain silent for now, knew that better then to remind his
vicious leader of his own
failures.
But for all of his years
of hard experience, Lanal had never learned to keep his mouth
shut.
“How many are
left?”
Drake made no reply. After
several seconds, Lanal started to speak again, but Drake cut him
off.
“Less then a dozen remain
at the base. It is unlikely that more then a handful of the men who fled
into the forest will return, if
any.”
“Too few to continue
operations,” a new voice interrupted. Both Drake and Lanal turned to
see Chell standing there, his hands tucked into the full sleeves of his tattered
robes.
“So you survived!”
Lanal said enthusiastically. “After the sounds I heard, I was worried.
What
happened?”
“That is none of your
concern,” Chell said flatly. “Now, what is our next
move?”
“We will have to go
underground until we can replenish our ranks,” Drake said.
Lanal sighed. “We will
have to train them from scratch, and most of our officers died last night,”
he groused. “It will take awhile to put together an usable
force.”
“There is never a lack
of men willing to kill for wealth,” Drake stated
coldly.
“I take it our arrangement
with that nobleman is
off?”
Drake
nodded.
“Then we must get rid
of him, he knows too much about us and our operations. Tiran as well, after
tonight he will realize what I am, and he knows my
face.”
“We will see to them
all,” Drake
promised.
“I will not be going
with you,” Chell interjected. Drake turned to regard him. Anyone else
he would have killed on the spot for speaking thus, but the dragoon had reached
a mutual understanding with the taciturn wizard over the years. He waited
for Chell to
elaborate.
“I may be able to strengthen
our forces. I will meet you at the
base.”
So saying, Chell closed his
eyes. With a crackle of black light, he was
gone.
“When did he learn to
do that?!” Lanal exclaimed. Drake started at him
coldly.
“Chell’s magic
is Chell’s business. Now, we
go.”
“As you say sir,”
Lanal replied obediently. “Ah, which way is
Dorter?”
*********************************************************************************
Katoi sniffed suddenly. Stopping
in his tracks, the goblin went down on all fours. The others eyed him nervously,
wondering what the unpredictable creature was up to. Katoi looked up at
them.
“They passed this
way.”
Hanlon looked at him intently.
“Which
ones.”
“Two,” the goblin
grunted. “I smell metal. One of them is heavy, the other
light.”
“Drake and Lanal,”
Hanlon said. “Which way were they
going?”
Katoi was already moving.
“This
way.”
They followed Katoi’s
lead as the goblin followed the tracks, often stopping to check for a boot
print or sniff the ground. After about an hour, he came to an abrupt
halt.
“A third one joined
them here,” Katoi announced. “I smell
death.”
“Death?” Rosa asked
curiously.
“Death,” the goblin
confirmed.
Before Rosa could ask him
to elaborate, the goblin began speaking
again.
“They stayed here for
sometime, then left in that direction,” he said, pointing east. “They
are not heading towards their
lair.”
“They’re headed
towards Dorter,” Rosa pointed out. “They must still have business
there.”
“Tiran.”
As one they looked towards
Ellis.
“He might be able to
help us, if they are in the city,” she
finished.
“He might be working
with them. You said he was the one that assigned Lanal with us,” Gilliam
pointed
out.
Ellis shook her
head.
“I don’t think
so, he seemed
trustworthy.”
“I would have said the
same thing about Lanal,” Gilliam muttered under his
breath.
“If he isn’t, he
might be their next target,” Hanlon pointed out. “That would be
their usual tactics; they never like to leave witnesses
behind.”
“Either way, Dorter
is where we need to go,” Rosa
interjected.
“I know a woman there
who could treat Gilliam’s injuries completely,” Alberto said
unexpectedly.
“She’s right,”
Gilliam agreed, privately shaking the thought of having Alberto chose his
doctor. “Let’s get a move on; they have a head start on
us.”
They all agreed, and soon
the party was off. Katoi sniffed the air in confusion as they left the area
though.
Only two sets of tracks led
away from the
place.
*********************************************************************************
Chell opened his eyes as
the abandoned campground came into being around him. Removing his skeletal
hands from his sleeves, he clicked his fingers together rhythmically. Slowly,
he looked the place
over.
The wagons still stood there,
abandoned by the survivors. The ground, torn up by the clawed feet of the
galloping chocobos, was turning to puddles of mud under the light rain that
had begun to fall. In his mind, he could hear the screams of dying men from
the night before as clearly as if he had been there. He
smiled.
He walked across the tortured
earth, newly gained senses guiding him inerrantly towards what he sought.
Soon he stood before a large patch of recently overturned soil. Under it,
he could sense the bodies of the fallen buried beneath. Spreading his hands
wide, he began to emit an eerie sound from the back of his throat. It was
a song of smothering earth and rotting flesh, of the nothingness that lay
beneath reality. It was a canticle to Death
Itself.
Crouching, he placed his
hands palms down against the dirt of the mass grave. A black ichor began
to congeal into being atop them, dripping into the soil. The ground seemed
to wither somehow as it did, a sickening, fetid stench arising from it. Poisoning
the earth itself with his evil, Chell chanted, calling out to the
darkness.
The ground began to bulge
and shift, as though the very land was straining to escape his touch. Finally,
a pallid hand pushed through the soil, followed be many, many more. A grin
of depraved pleasure split the evil man’s face as bandit and guardsman
alike rose to his
call.
When it was done, Chell looked
at them. They stood at strange, unnatural angles, like puppets jerking to
crude tugs on a string. Fatal wounds lay wide open and covered with grave
soil, letting out a stench that would make a normal man vomit. Only their
eyes showed any signs of true life, red, and gleaming with malignant
intelligence.
“I have summoned you
here and clothed you in mortal husks that you might do what you love the
best: kill the living. Know this. If you obey me, you will feel the crunch
of human flesh and bone beneath your hands. Defy me, and I will cast you
back into the pits I drew you from, and find replacements from among your
brethren. Do you
understand?”
A ghastly moan went up from
among the zombie ranks, answering Chell’s question. He smiled again
and prepared to go, but then something else caught his
attention.
There was another body
nearby.
At the edge of the clearing,
under a tall, majestic tree, a small grave had been dug. Focusing his will,
he blinked in and out of existence, reappearing before it. Placing his hands
atop the grave, he repeated his
chant.
But something blocked him,
driving him back. He fell back a few steps, hands instinctively positioned
to block whatever inexplicable force had driven him off. As hard as he tried,
he could not reach the
grave!
Snarling with anger, he slapped
his hand against the tree. He jerked it back the instant he made contact
with the bark, hissing with pain. It had burned
him!
Angrily, he called out to
his undead minions, telepathically commanding them to dig up the grave. The
nearest ones shambled over to obey him, but as they came close they too stumbled
back, arms raised as if to shield their eyes. Chell shouted at them to go
on, but no matter how much he cursed them they would not
budge.
Finally he gave up and walked
into the forest, heading towards the base. His undead host trailed behind
him, stomping the underbrush to death beneath their
feet.
And through it all,
Xavier’s body did not budge.