Chapter 333: Darkness Within, Darkness Without |
Darkness Within, Darkness Without
Sir Harold
The hall blazed with the light of the Grand Gemstone, standing upon the floor in its wooden frame. Yet even that fierce radiance seemed to falter before the horror now revealed. From the catacombs came a thousand undead, marching in dreadful ranks behind the Saint and her grotesque knights. All around the hall, another hundred bodies were rising from the benches, their movements staggered and unnatural. Limbs twitched. Heads jerked. Dead hands scraped and clawed for balance as they struggled to their feet.
Worse still were those who had only just died by suicide. They rose faster than the others.
In the span of a few breaths, the hall had descended into chaos.
At the horrific sight before him, Sir Harold, and many with him, turned to Sir Morton for guidance.
The Mage Knight did not hesitate. He strode toward Sister Emma, who, confused and unsure, took a step back. Before she could protest, he swept her over his shoulder and bellowed to the men, “Abandon this place. Run for your lives!”
By then, Uncle had already broken into a run toward the wall of caskets.
Sir Harold knew that if he stayed and fought, his men would follow him to the bitter end. Swallowing his pride, he forced himself into motion and shouted, “To the stairs! Regroup!”
“Fuck this shit. Fuck the Monastery!” the Vice cursed hoarsely as they fled. Their goal had been within reach, yet now they had to abandon it.
No one could have imagined that on the very night they broke a record by taking a siege with a glider, they would also come face to face with a fell creature from old legends. An enemy of mankind. A lich.
“This is impossible. There’s no such art. Necromancy is nothing but superstition,” Sister Emma muttered to herself as Sir Morton, carrying her, pulled ahead of Uncle, who was already losing his breath.
The rest followed behind, running with all their might.
Wails and screams echoed from behind them. A few glanced back, only to see the whole chamber fall into darkness once more. The Saint had deactivated the Great Gemstone.
“Shittt,” Uncle cursed weakly. His eyes needed time to adjust, and that forced everyone except Sir Morton to slow down.
But Sir Morton, too, came to a stop, surprising even Emma. Slung over his shoulder, she twisted as much as she could to see what had halted him. Something was blocking his way, only a few steps from the wall of caskets.
There, in the middle of the passage, stood a familiar man in a red cuirass, a deep, bleeding gash cut across his neck.
Emma shuddered, her face tightening in fear.
“T-that’s Gregory,” one of the SAR behind them cried in disbelief.
The Saint’s magic had drawn even their dead comrades to her side. The realization, and all that it meant, struck even the hardest men with fear. If they fell here, they too might rise again and be turned against their own brothers. The lich had denied them even the harsh embrace of death.
“Harold, this is Animate Dead!” Sir Morton yelled, warning him that what stood before them was not their fallen comrade, but a corpse moved by the Saint’s will.
“Let me face him!” Sir Harold shouted, fury burning in his voice.
Knowing at once what Sir Harold intended, Sir Morton hitched Emma higher on his shoulder and veered wide. The SAR members and a few other men followed closely behind. They slipped past Gregory just as the dead man drew his sword and stepped in to stop them, but the undead’s reaction came too late.
Yet Gregory was not the only danger there.
“Hold on,” the Mage Knight said as he darted and swerved between haggard figures in dusty clothes.
Emma gasped as she saw the corpses inside the caskets begin to burst through the old wood. Some had already spilled out when the caskets were knocked over or shoved aside, and now they were clawing free, rising, and hurling themselves toward them.
Behind them, Uncle barely squeezed past Gregory as the dead man hacked at him in a wild, reckless swing. Sweat poured down Uncle’s body as he ran for his life, knowing his only hope was to stay close to Sir Morton.
The undead Gregory was about to give chase when he spotted a new threat charging toward him. He turned and saw Sir Harold leaping over the scattered caskets, ignoring the risen dead and overtaking the other men. He came straight for Gregory, who raised his sword and brought it down in a savage overhead slash.
Sir Harold did not slow. Seeing the blade fall from above, he met it with a wide rising swing from his lower right. Steel clashed and bit, but neither lost momentum. Gregory twisted along the locked blades and drove his strike toward Harold’s side.
“Slow!” Sir Harold yelled, catching his opponent’s sword with his left gauntlet while letting his breastplate take the blow.
At the same time, his right hand released his own sword and shot for Gregory’s neck. He seized it and slammed the figure to the ground.
With swelling anger, Sir Harold broke Gregory’s neck, ending the mockery of his dead comrade.
“Commander!” his men shouted, stopping at his side.
“We need to go,” the Vice said as the dead closed in behind them.
Without so much as a sigh of relief, Sir Harold snatched up his sword and picked up his pace again despite the pain from his stitched wound. His men quickly fell in alongside him.
Ahead of them, the SAR members were already slashing and hacking their way through a growing swarm of undead.
“Drop the spear and crossbows. They’re useless here,” Sir Morton shouted from the front, glancing back one last time before ascending the stairs. Emma, still slung over his shoulder, could only grimace as the Mage Knight climbed with all his strength.
Behind them, Uncle slipped on the uneven, slick floor and crashed down, gasping, his face gone deathly pale. The bailiff official and the squire, who had kept running from the start, caught him and dragged him up the stairs with the help of one of the SAR. They still deemed him worth the trouble as a witness.
From the other corner of the hall, more undead came running toward the stair entrance.
The SAR members gritted their teeth and met them at once, fighting to keep the path open.
Sir Harold, the Vice, and their men had barely cleared the wall of caskets, which was now crumbling behind them. Faced with a small group of decaying undead, Sir Harold snatched up a casket lid and swung the wood like a shield, bashing the nearly skeletal figures away with violent force.
“Sir!” urged the SAR with two crossbows slung across his back, now fighting with his sword as he saw more threats rushing in.
“Go!” Sir Harold yelled to the SAR members, who hesitated only a moment before running up the stairs, leaving behind straggling undead that now turned their attention toward the new group.
The swarm came after the living in ugly, jerking lurches, their limbs snapping and flailing as they ran.
Sir Harold deliberately slowed to cut down several that had come too close to his men. Only after the Vice and his men had passed him did he bolt toward the stairs.
At last, they escaped the lowest level.
***
Sir Morton
Aside from one undead hand reaching out from a wardrobe, the Mage Knight encountered nothing during the climb. Even in near-complete darkness, broken only by several lanterns, he never slowed his pace.
“Sir,” Emma called from over his shoulder, “a Mage Knight is the more knowledgeable when it comes to fell creatures. Why aren’t you fighting at the rear?”
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“Because I fear the worst,” he answered without slowing.
At the narrowest stretch, step by careful step, he climbed more cautiously, making sure not to brush against the wooden furniture lining both sides of the stairs and send it crashing down.
When he finally cleared the staircase, what greeted him was not the comfort of safety, but intense fighting. The men on this floor were shouting and screaming, already locked in battle against another horror.
“Sir Morton!” called a man-at-arms who saw him, his voice full of relief.
Another reported in a shrill voice, “The dead, they came alive!”
“What are we fighting against, Sir?” another asked, his scarred face tight with distress.
Emma felt her stomach drop. The sight struck like a blow to the gut. It was clear that even on this floor, fighting had already broken out against the undead. Yet in retrospect, it was only to be expected. This floor held a vast mortuary hall, where more than a hundred dead from the war had been laid to await burial. Now they stood once more, fighting for their Saint.
“Cursed dead,” Sir Morton growled as he strode to the nearest fit man-at-arms and handed Emma over to him.
“Get the Banneret some water,” the SAR Captain ordered from his stretcher, watching them with a sweat-soaked face and eyes that still burned to join the fight.
One of the wounded men at once lifted a waterskin.
Sir Morton snatched it, drained it in great gulps, and thrust it back. Without another word, he pushed past the wounded who stood or lay on stretchers and charged straight into the swarm of undead. Many still wore gambesons and carried their swords. Even the robed dead bore funerary knives meant for the afterlife.
The wavy blade of the flamberge soon sang through the air, and bodies and limbs were quickly torn apart.
The twelve fighting men watched with wide eyes, gulping dryly between breaths. They had never fought undead before, and many were already bloodied and shaken from the sheer ferocity of the attack. Now they watched a Mage Knight go berserk. It was as though some unseen chain had snapped.
There was only strength and fury as Sir Morton swung his flamberge in an endless storm of sharpened steel. Even alone, he hurled himself into a horde of undead that nearly swallowed him whole.
The twelve men hesitated at first, glancing at one another, until one of them muttered, “The Lord and Lady are watching.”
“For the Blue and Bronze!” another shouted despite the terror.
Five boldly returned to the fight, eager to stand beside their champion even though they knew they were doomed.
At the same time, more men came up from the stairs below.
First came the bailiff official and a squire, carrying a lanky, robed man between them. They brought him to the corner, where he dropped to all fours and gasped for breath.
“Where’s the commander?” one of the wounded men asked.
“What happened down there?” followed at once.
“The same thing happened here,” the bailiff official answered breathlessly, his eyes fixed on the Mage Knight as he battled the undead with tireless ferocity.
More SAR members soon emerged from the stairs below, followed by the Vice and the rest of the men-at-arms. Sir Harold came last, breathing hard, his chest heaving, his face drawn tight from strain and battle.
His first command was, “Gather all the fire bottles. We’ll burn the stairs.”
While the SAR hurried to ready their fire bottles, Sir Harold, seeming to possess endless stamina, walked to a large cabinet and began dragging it toward the stairs.
At once, everyone understood what he meant to do and rushed to help. They needed to block the stairs and slow the swarm below. With grunts and heaving breaths, they shoved the cabinet forward, its legs scraping hard across the floor. It struck the edge, tipped, then crashed down the stairwell in a burst of splintering wood and falling dust.
Hideous noises rose from beneath them. The undead were already trying to force their way up.
The SAR members gathered six fire bottles and hurled them down the stairs. Glass shattered below. Fire crackled to life, and soon an orange glow began to pulse up through the stairwell, along with smoke and the harsh stink of burning.
Sir Harold did not stay to watch. After drinking from a waterskin offered by a squire, he picked up the casket lid he had carried from below. Its size suited him, and the handle allowed him to drag it with ease.
He strode past the others, who first stared at the odd makeshift shield, then noticed the dark, dried blood streaked across the Banneret’s armor, face, and bare limbs. In their eyes, he had become the very image of a hero from legend. An unyielding figure, like a mountain of faith upon which they placed all their hopes, against all the horrors that had unfolded in this accursed Monastery.
Even Sister Emma was moved. “Sir,” she called softly, “may fortune be with you.”
Sir Harold gave her a warm nod. He then exchanged a knowing nod with the SAR Captain and went straight toward Sir Morton and the five men who were fighting desperately to avoid being surrounded. With a firm grip on his sword and the casket lid, he joined the fight with the same calm he would have worn on an evening walk.
Heartened by the sight, three other weary men rushed in to join the fight, taking position to guard his sides. Meanwhile, the rest, led by the Vice, strained with the last of their strength to shove as much wooden furniture as they could down the stairs.
The fire had grown larger, and black smoke billowed upward.
“Come on, come on,” one man said, almost cheering the flames on as they licked downward, willing them to engulf everything below.
Near the corridor connecting the mortuary hall to the main entrance, Sir Morton’s flamberge felled its thirtieth victim, carving through the poorly armed undead. Yet even he had been slowed. The great blade was no longer as hungry as before. Its edge had dulled from hacking through bone, rotted flesh, coarse linen, and mail.
The five brave men with him had already formed a circle and were fighting for their lives. Many were wounded and close to breaking when Sir Harold came charging in from behind.
His casket lid swung wide, smashing undead where they stood and sweeping several off their feet in a single blow. When the wood began to splinter from the countless ferocious impacts, Sir Harold brought his sword around in a wide arc. Though its edge had grown nicked and dull from all the fighting, it still hacked apart the undead before him. Even the dead groaned and shrieked amid the carnage.
Sir Morton noticed and glanced straight at him.
“Need help?” Sir Harold jested as he swung his sword into a charging undead. The blow struck the creature through its gambeson and hurled it crashing to the floor.
“The more, the merrier,” the Mage Knight replied in kind as he reformed his stance against the wave of undead coming from the mortuary hall.
Now the men saw it clearly. The Shogun’s two Bannerets were monsters in their own right.
The two Bannerets met the new swarm with exemplary gallantry, allowing the wounded to be evacuated to the rear. But against such a mass, even they began to give ground.
Even lacking pole weapons, many of the undead still wore armor, and their deathless bodies made them far harder to bring down. Losing limbs did not stop them. Blood loss did not kill them. Not even a sword through the chest did more than slow them down.
The other men at the rear had their own struggle, straining to shove as much furniture as they could toward the stairwell below. Yet even they, with only hurried glances, understood that the undead were far worse opponents than the drugged-up Believers. They were faster and fought with a ferocity no living man could match, flinging themselves at the living like beasts upon prey.
“We’ve got to help them,” one of the SAR said, still out of breath.
Two others quickly agreed.
“Go if you can,” the Vice said before straining to push another heavy wardrobe with three other men. The men, the squire, and the bailiff official were all out of breath. Even Uncle had joined in.
At one point, the official cast a wary glance at the wardrobe, uneasy about what it might contain, yet kept his mouth shut, thinking the fire would consume it all regardless.
Four men steadied their breath, drew their swords, and joined the fight. Their arrival gave the two Bannerets a little more room to breathe.
Seizing the chance, Sir Harold asked, “Is this the reason you were running ahead of us earlier?”
“No,” Sir Morton admitted. “I needed time to think. And I needed to reach the signifier.”
“Then go,” Sir Harold urged.
The Mage Knight cast him a brief look, then bisected a robed undead in mid-charge.
“Leave this to us. You have the stamina, and the darkness will not slow you down. And you have the rank. They’ll believe you.”
Sir Morton’s expression hardened in agreement.
“Go,” Sir Harold urged again as he advanced into a cluster of undead that had nearly swallowed their brave fighters whole, cutting down the dead left and right with lightning-fast swings of his sword.
Sir Morton bolted back toward the wounded.
Sister Emma and the others stared in confusion.
“Water,” the SAR Captain ordered his men again. This time, another wounded man already had a waterskin ready in hand.
“Gratitude,” Sir Morton said as he took it and drank a gulp before returning it. Then his eyes turned to Emma, who already suspected what was about to happen. Without asking, he seized her and slung her over his shoulder once more. Emma gasped weakly, then surrendered herself to fate.
“What are you doing? Where are you taking her?” It was Uncle who asked.
“Inner Sanctum,” Sir Morton replied. “I need someone to convince them of this corrupted blight.”
“Wouldn’t it be better if you carried one of those undead?” the SAR Captain suggested.
“That is why I have her. More hands,” he joked crudely, and Emma’s usually graceful face crumpled in despair, like a girl being tormented by her older brother.
Not wasting any more precious time, Sir Morton hurried toward the stairs.
“Speed and violence!” shouted the wounded man who had given him the waterskin, crying out their creed.
The other men responded at once with, “The Lord and Lady are watching!”
Everyone belonging to the House of Blue and Bronze roared. They needed it. They were facing unimaginable enemies, fell creatures straight from children’s tales.
Sir Morton bolted toward the stairs, stopping only when he reached a young undead in robes that was trying to rise despite one broken leg.
“This will do,” he muttered coldly.
Emma watched in horror as the Mage Knight pinned the young undead to the floor and swung his sword three times, each blow cutting through thigh and arm. He deliberately left the right hand intact, not out of mercy, but so he would have something convenient to seize and carry.
“Sister, hold this for me,” he said as calmly as if he were asking her to hold his cup of water.
Emma could only grimace as she grabbed the undead by its cold wrist. At once, her sweaty palm and fingers felt the full horror of its leathery skin. Worse, its young eyes, almost childlike, were wide and fixed on her. She might even have known who it had once been, a servant, or perhaps an apprentice among the scribe candidates.
Undeterred by the loss of most of its limbs, the young undead still tried to bite her. But the Mage Knight had already broken into a sure run, and the thing now hung from her grip, dragging and swaying behind them like a grotesque tail.
Ahead, Sir Harold fought with six other men against the wave of undead pouring from the hall. He noticed Sir Morton’s approach. “What took you so damn long?”
“Double guarantees,” Sir Morton replied in haste as he ran past them toward the stairs, where their men above could be seen holding the path with shield and sword.
Sir Harold turned just in time to see Emma wincing, her face almost pleading for help, while still clutching the nearly limbless undead by its wrist. In spite of everything, he couldn’t help but grin at the absurd sight.
Someone at the stairs spotted the Mage Knight’s approach and shouted at once, “Make way! Make way!”
“Move!” Sir Morton barked as he charged up the stairs with Emma over his shoulder and the mutilated undead swinging from her grasp behind him.
As the two rushed upward, something vast slammed into the burning barricade at the far end of the floor. The impact quickly drew the Vice and his men’s attention to the stairway below.
Then it came again. Another heavy impact shuddered through the floor and walls, making both the wounded and the fighting men exchange worried glances. Wood cracked and broke apart as burning debris was hurled aside. A sudden gust swept through, and the fiery smoke thinned at once.
Even the burning barricade could not hold back a lich.
The undead, too, had little patience for the living.
***