Chapter 17: Whether in Chains or in Laurels

Chapter 17:  Whether in Chains or in Laurels

I rest on my knees, listening to the chanting voices.  I stare at the grass, waiting for the inevitable.  The flickering light of the bonfire is the only change in my vision until I hear that damned voice call out again.

She screams.  Each night it's slightly different.  She begs for help or calls my name a little differently every single time.  I look up to see her being placed onto the block as the masked man wielding a halberd lifts his weapon.  The tears stream down from those beautiful, violet eyes.  I look back down before the pale white hair cascades to the ground again.

My eyes open, freeing me to see the flickering light of another flame shining on the walls of my room.  I look down, and remember a time so long ago when I used to think that this lantern was my curse.  I know now that my visions are the true curse.

The same visions that have awakened me for seven long years.

---

I move my arm as quickly as I can, but there's just not enough energy to build any speed.  The weight on my arm forces it to swing low, and I crumple to the ground like a wet towel as the smaller figure crashes into me.  I still can't see it beneath the cloth that's draped around it.

It hastily grabs at my the chain shirt, pulling it hard from the arm to expose my shoulder and immediately biting hard into the skin.  It hurts like hell, but all I can manage is a hiss of pain.  I try pulling up my lantern.  I can still kill this thing.  I have enough in me for one more gout of flame.

It pulls away a second before I light it up, and my vision goes completely dark as something enters my mouth.
It's wet and slimy, and tastes slightly of iron.  In waves I feel revulsion, then confusion, then epiphany.  My body goes limp from relief and exhaustion as the adrenaline slowly starts to flush out.  I almost smile, forgetting that my mouth is being violated.

This isn't hunger.  It's lust.  She's a mamono.  She must've been here because of how high the mana levels are.  The poor thing must be too hungry to think straight, and the trap at the entrance would've paralyzed her for a time, only to leave her in here, alone and confused.  I place my hand on the figure, pull out a sizable piece of the spirit energy from my flame, and press it squarely into her chest.  She pulls back, rigid and moaning before a rictus grin of pleasure spreads across her face.
Too far across her face.  The line of shark-like teeth extends past where her cheeks should have started.

I pull my lantern back to look at the girl even as she wraps a pair of crimson arms across her chest to hold herself.
I let out a quiet hum of relaxed understanding.  Another Ghoul.  Easily the hundredth I've met after all my crypt-diving.  Meeting one always brings back a pang from that old wound.  It also amazes me everytime, too.  The more Ghouls I meet the more I realize how unique she was.

She finally starts letting go of herself.  Her fists unclench the sheet, letting it fall from her head and giving me a clear view of her face.  Her violet, pupil-less eyes.  The curtain of white hair that falls into a heap on the floor, almost as long as she is tall.  The cinnamon tan of her skin.  Tattered black cloth covers her modesty, but only just.

I'm struck by the unsettling feeling of recognizing something but not remembering what it is.  When her smile starts to fade and her eyes roll back out of their sockets it shifts into being the more unsettling feeling of recognizing something and not understanding why.
The exhaustion has extended all the way to my mind, and it's an effort of will just to concentrate on the forming question.  I almost open my mouth to ask before the realization shuts it right back down.

She looks like Misses Green.
Misses Green always looked like Jen, but older.
Jen would look like Jen, but older.

No.  I won't do this again.  Not here.  I'm too tired to think straight.  I'm not making the same mistake I made every damn time I went into some crypt back when I started.  They look similar, that's all.
The grin fades into panting as she stares at me.  We wait, watching each other, each trying to piece together what we see.  Her lips finally pull into a pained smile.  When she opens her mouth the voice from seven years of nightmares is little more than a strained whisper.  "You came after me."

My heart's not strong enough for this.  I try to remember what I wanted to say, what I'd wanted to hear, but it's all gone now.  A puff of air is all that comes out when I try to laugh.  "Of course I did"
There's another impact, softer, as she falls forward and presses into me.  Her voice cracks, "I thought-"
I pull up the one unimpeded arm and hold her to my chest.  I slouch forward and rest, save for that one arm.  Its task is too important.

For a minute we simply wait while I try in vain to catch my breath and she slowly, silently drenches my shirt in tears.  Neither of us speak; we've heard all we needed.  I can walk away from this place and never look back.  Seven years of constant searching and training are done.  Maybe the nightmares won't ever go away, but I'll be fine if I wake up and she's there with me.  For the first time in seven years I'll sleep peacefully.  For the first time in ten I'll go back to a home that will feel like it's mine.  I smile, and the pressure from my cheeks forces the water from my eyes.

Interrupting my happiness, a small, cruel part of me tells me that I can't leave things like they are.  I hate it for what it's telling me to do.  I hate that it's right.
Jen finally seems to stop and looks up toward me with a bitter, yet broad smile.  Her gaze falls on my hair with a small gasp.  She searches for the words even as she asks "How long has it been?"
"Seven years."
The smile disappears beneath the wave of shock.  Her face darkens, silently apologizing.  I tell her not to with a look.

"Listen," I start, as I try to get up.
I try to get up again, but the weight is just too much.  I slump back against the wall and start unbuckling the straps holding my pack.  "Listen, I still have something to do."
She tilts her head in confusion, but then looks back to me with horror.  "Wait, no, don't go in there," she starts in a panic.  "There's something wrong here.  I had to stay because I was starving, but- but something's sick and- and you need to get out of here."
I place my free hand on her shoulder.  I smile as my usual calm reasserts itself.  "We'll be fine.  I just need you to stay here for me, just for a little while."
The worry spreads across her face, before she looks down to my chest and nods.  "All right, I'll wait here."

I pull the second ball of energy from my flame, as much as I can this time.  "I'm sorry - I really am, but you've said that before."
She collapses onto her side as the pleasure hits her.  I manage to get onto my hands and knees before getting my feet under me.  I hold my breath as I reach into my pack, grab the only thing in there that's soft, and stuff it into my pocket.  The smell's going to be distracting, but I can't take any more risks.  I turn from the sound of gasping moans.

A few experimental steps later and I'm on my way to the last room, silently wondering what I'm planning on doing when I get there.

---

"Ever used one of these before?"
I smile incredulously, "Why the hells would I ever use one of these?  I'm not going to kill some random mamono in a crypt."
Julian raises his hands in mock surrender.  "Hey, you keep a torch in your pack; I'm not presuming anything."
I balk, "That's standard adventurer gear.  This isn't."

He presses the thing into my hand.  I want to push it back away.  "Yeah, well, you aren't facing mamono here.  You're dealing with a soon-to-be lich, meaning a mage, and this is perfect for dealing with mages."
"Can't he just magic it away?"  I make a vague hand gesture to clarify the manner in which mages magic things away.
He snorts with amusement.  "Well, yeah, if he knows what you're doing.  The thing to know about magic is that preparation is everything.  If you know exactly what your opponent is going to do then magic will win everytime.  The other thing to know is that magic can make you ridiculously powerful."

I fix him with my most stern are-you-an-idiot stare.  "How the hells does that help me?"

---

I lean against the door, pushing it open with body weight to conserve my strength.  As my foot steps into the room beyond, I really wish it hadn't.  The foot lands with a wet squish as I get my first glimpse of the nightmare I've walked into.

The walls are meat.  The ceiling is meat.  The floor is meat.  Muscle wraps itself into four pillars holding up a veritable cathedral of tendon and bone.  In the center beyond the pillars steps lead up to a throne of human hands, on which rests a single figure in robes too black to be made out of physical matter.  Above him is a clear crystal half his size hanging twenty feet above him, slowly rotating and holding in an amorphous orb of molten, inky something.  The charnel hallway lacks any sort of lighting, and yet everything is dimly visible.

I take a deep breath and try not to look as weak as I am as I step forward.  I smile, faking confidence as I ask "Little over-the-top, don't you think?"
He doesn't answer.  He doesn't move at all as I walk forward.  A sure sign that it's a trap, but I don't have any real alternatives aside from turning back around.  "Couldn't make do with stone?"

I step between the stone pillars, and the floor surrounding glows a baleful red.  I freeze, waiting for whatever's about to go wrong to do so, but the light simply fades away.
"Val Trevor."  The baritone reverberates throughout the hall, and I can swear that the stone trembled slightly.  The acoustics make it seem that the walls are speaking, rather than the mage.  "I saw you amongst my enemies, and hoped that we would speak."

I don't think I could answer that if my mind wasn't foggy.  I raise an eyebrow and manage a tentative "Really?"  I immediately regret it.
The figure slowly rises from his seat.  "Why yes.  I have seen the pains you have faced, and know them myself."
The pieces click together somewhat easily now.  One, he's actually monologuing.  Two, he knows that I'm dying, and three, he's saying that he is, too.
I take another step forward, asking "And you think I'll let you go because- what, that makes us friends?"

He steps forward, advancing down the stairs as his laugh fills the hall, growing louder as the echoes feed off themselves.  "No, I think you'll 'let me go' because you have no choice in the matter.  Did you really think I'd let you simply walk up to me?"
"Hope springs eternal."  Banter was never my strength, but hopefully this will be enough to keep him talking.

I lift my foot up to take a step and find that I can't.  The floor outside of the red glow before shifts away from me as I try to step on it, leaving me slightly further from the robed man than before in spite of the fact that I've moved forward.  His tone shifts from menacing to affable in an instant.  "I always preferred spells which render my enemies helpless, but never for use on humans.  It's those damned monsters, you see."

I stare, dumbfounded, and for the first time hearing his smile in his voice.  "You know how they are.  It's why you ran.  It's natural - they're just monsters.  Any sane man would get as far from them as he could.  Soon, though, no one will have to."

At this, the bubbling, swirling blackness within the crystal opens its blood red eye.  I shiver as I feel its gaze piercing me, looking through me and out the other side.  "Amazing, isn't it?  The last fragment of the demon lord's power, hidden away for twenty-one long years.  I've incorporated it into my phylactery, and soon the two shall become one."  He takes a final step, remaining maddeningly outside of range of a swing.  The shuddering of the floor builds as his voice reaches a crescendo.  "The fools out there think me nothing more than a lich, but soon I shall be something so much more.  Not a demon lord, but enough of one to control each and every monster in this world."

He pauses, waiting for me to continue the insane dialogue.  For my part, I simply frown in tired incomprehension.  My shoulders slump as I ask "You're a lich already?  I thought you had to wait-"
"Until midnight, yes," he answers, annoyed at the question.  He shakes his head under his hood, "But it is, you see, midnight in the eastern continent, and I," he begins as he grabs his hood and slows his voice for emphasis, "have magic, you idiots."

The hood falls back, revealing the skull of a man wearing the shattered pieces of an iron crown.  The sockets are empty save for two pinpricks of crimson light that are focused on me.

---

He just smiles.  "It helps a lot.  Trust me.  No one's more vulnerable than someone who thinks he's invincible."
"I've never used one of these before."
"So he'll never expect it," he finishes.
"All right, fair enough.  So is this enchanted?"
He lets out a solid bark of laughter, "That?  No."
I'm about to fix him with another stare until he holds out something else.  "These are."

---

I collapse in equal parts defeat and exhaustion.  The hollow, empty voice of my captor sounds as though it's coming from far away as he finishes, "Fear not, for I will not bring another dark age or another war.  I will reach out and I will destroy them."  He turns around and continues, more quietly, "No one else will have to die."

"Damn straight."
The first shot startles us both, but I continue, unloading the revolver as quickly as I can before he has time to react.  The seventh shot answers me with nothing but a click, and I stop, watching and waiting.
The lich turns back to me, examining itself, before the hollow echoes of laughter radiate from it.  "Undead Bane bullets?  Reasonable, I suppose.  It's a shame that I've gotten a bit slimmer since I cast off my flesh."

The first line forms on the crystal hanging in the center and I let out a breath of absolute relief.  He turns, slowly and silently to face it.  I take a deep gulp of air to answer, "Not aiming at you."
The line crawls up the center of the clear glass all the way to the top.
"Also, bullets of Shatter."

A sigh like a slow, cold wind escapes the lich as he turns back to me.  "I had hoped that you, at least-"
The crystal shatters into a thousand glimmering pieces.  The lich's robes disappear in an instant, leaving nothing but a human skeleton that noisily falls to the ground in a heap.

The room shifts suddenly from dark grey to a deep red as I look over the throne of hands to the black energy that reaches outward in tendrils.  Black consumes the wall behind it and slowly begins to creep forward.  The orb itself falls suddenly, halting two feet from the ground before swooping toward me.  I try to lift my light to defend myself, but I don't have to.  The flame launches itself in front of me, exiting its chamber entirely.

I cover my eyes as the room lights up in a brilliant maelstrom of red, violet, yellow, and orange.  The light fades, and I lower my hands to watch the last vestige of the demon lord's energy burning away inside the last fragment of the chief god's power.

A single, quiet puff of smoke marks their mutual destruction, and the room begins to fade into pitch blackness.  A crack from nearby startles me, and I look down to see the chain and manacle on my wrist become enveloped in rust within seconds, before splitting apart and falling to the ground in a pile of red ash.  I try to feel the energy of the lantern, but it isn't there anymore.

If I weren't so tired, I might almost feel sad.

I fall onto my back, suddenly aware of how extraordinarily difficult it is to move my body.  Each pull of air into my lungs is an effort of will.
"Hey!"
Hey yourself, I fail to say.  I feel and hear the rush of air as Jen runs up to me and falls to her knees at my side.  "You fucker," she shouts playfully, and a small fist hits me softly on the shoulder.  "You- you," she starts and stops.
Her voice turns worried.  "Val?  What's wrong?  Are you hurt?  What'd he do to you?"
"Hey," I manage to whisper.
I feel her lean in, which is to say that I feel a pound of hair drape itself over my arm.
I barely manage to wheeze "Marry me?"

Her voice is pained as she whispers back "Of course."

I lift the pile of lead and rubber that is my arm and let it flop onto my chest.  The button on my chest pocket feels like an almost insurmountable hurdle, but I manage to pull it open.  I grab the small, moist thing inside and pull it out, dragging it along my chest.  The smell hits me, and I could cry from how wonderful it is.  The sweetness of honey without being overwhelming.  The flavorful savoriness of the finest sweetmeats.  The scent gives me the final burst of energy I need to drag it into my mouth, and the taste exceeds my every expectation.

With one final feat of strength, I swallow.

There's an almost electrical jolt that strikes my entire body, followed by an intense cold that snuffs out the last spark of life.  I exhale, and then I rest.

---

"It's called an 'Undead Grey Lamentation," she says flatly.
I smile and playfully ask "did you make that up?"
"No."  The Ghost doesn't so much as smile.
I cough before continuing, "And it's a mushroom," I start.
"Yes."
"And it's magical," I continue.
"Yes."
"And it'll solve all of my problems by," I stop as I reach the part I'm actually interested in.
"Killing you."

I slowly lean forward to rest my elbows on my knees.  The Ghost continues to float there, staring flatly at me.  I open my mouth, find that I'm not sure what to say to this, and close it again.  It takes me another minute before I find my tongue again.  "You know that dying isn't the problem, right?  I've got a handle on that.  No help needed."
She finally shows a flicker of emotion as she furrows her brow in annoyance.  "It's not permanent, obviously.  You eat it and you'll die.  Then, you'll have sex and wake up as an undead."

"Ah."  I wait a moment as the knowledge settles.  "Wait, I have sex while I'm dead?"

"Demonic energy," she verbally shrugs.

---

I open my eyes, gazing upward to a ceiling made out of meat.  I immediately don't want to still be looking at that.
For a moment I'm confused by this before realizing why.  It was pitch black earlier.  I turn my head to look for a light source.  There isn't one.
It's still pitch black now, I can just see perfectly in spite of that.

The feeling of victory hits me in a wave and I open my mouth to laugh.  Nothing comes out, though.
It strikes me that that's because my lungs are empty.  I haven't inhaled yet.
I don't feel any need to, though.  My lungs don't feel strange or anything, only empty.
I lift an arm experimentally and discover two things.  The first is that it feels the same as it did yesterday.  The second is that everything from the elbow to my fingers has turned bright red.

I sit up, immediately finding that my pants have been both slightly ripped, and pulled down to my knees.  I remedy this and do my best to try to rebuckle them.

Then I look to my side, and all other thought processes cease.
Jen's laying there, one hand clasped over her mouth, the other is pressed tightly against one breast and continues downward between her legs.  Her thighs slowly shift, holding her arm tightly between them.  Her expression is tense on one side and relaxed on the other.  One eye is almost entirely closed while the other is half-liddedly staring into the distance.  A wet smack comes from her blissful smile as she very slowly swallows and lets out a profoundly satisfied sigh.

I continue to stare for a minute as she slowly squirms and rubs one hand across her taut stomach, smiling contentedly at everything and nothing.  It takes me another minute to realize that I'd been staring, and then a minute after that to look away.

It's just interesting.

Really interesting.
It's hard to think of anything else.  Or anything at all.

I eventually shake my head and get up onto my feet.  We're done here.  We're finally, completely done here.  I pull off my coat and lay it over Jen who slowly recognizes that something's happening.  She shifts her head to look at me, smiling and letting out a slow, bleary "Hi."
"Hi yourself."  I slowly reach under her knees and around her shoulders and lift her off the ground.
She only reacts with a short "Mm?"

"What say you we go home?"  She hums in agreement and I begin the long walk down the various halls and stairways.  She slowly comes back to her senses and promptly hides her face from embarrassment.

The circular room where I began stretches out in front of me, and I quickly step out into it.  There's a delightful sense of weightlessness as I step off the staircase to find that I don't even have the vaguest sense of fatigue.  It's like I'm not using my muscles at all anymore, simply moving my limbs by will alone.

I look down to the slight weight in my newly colored arms.  I try not to smile too broadly in case she stops burying her face into my chest and looks upward.
I try, but I'm only human.
"Where are we going," she asks my ribcage.
"Well, first through the encampment, then the ride back to civilization, and then to my house."
She shuffles around in my arms, still trying to avoid all eye contact.  "All right, I'll walk from here."
I smile further, "Now that doesn't sound right.  You're probably still weak from hunger."
She looks upward with slowly dawning concern.  "Well you're not carrying me all the way home."

I step out onto the ashen plains.

"You're not," she insists.

---

I open the door, smiling as I stride into the first of the mostly empty and spartan rooms of my home.  "And here we are," I announce.

She mutters something into my chest.
"Nice, isn't it?"
She mutters something more insistently.
"Of course, we'll need to change things up a bit.  Make it a little bit less of a bachelor pad."
She weakly punches me in the chest before pulling herself away and half-shouting "Just put me down already!"

Her face is red, but she's smiling in spite of herself.  That smile is everything that I've ever lacked.