Post by Eurydice on Aug 24, 2008 12:18:52 GMT -5
((A write up of the epic night of epic ^^))
The dragon had been easy, the wards simple. The phylactery’s guardian had fallen with, all things considered, not too much trouble.
And now, this. What’d they’d known all evening would be coming.
The voice of Del’ter’hlor the Charming, resonant and sepulchral, echoed through the chamber, and Kiri stared in desperation at the woman with the red dragon wings, who’d stood alongside her only moments ago, gleaming sword in hand. “Euridice,” the lich smiled thinly. “Destroy them. Utterly.”
Kirjava didn’t wait. She couldn’t. Knowing that she and her friend spoke the same silent apology, she hurled the first spell at Euri as she advanced.
Ganeous raised his sword and flew into the melee with a roar; Kiri couldn’t even see which one of the two the paladin was lunging at. Sparks flew as steel met steel, arcane energy meeting arcane energy. Kiri bit her lip as she unleashed another column of fire at the two. It wasn’t supposed to work like this. Hound and Mauri should have been fighting alongside them. But the lanky albino woman was rigid stone in one of the cages before them, and the old man was nowhere to be seen. Kiri’s heart sank.
Everything was moving too fast; the Charming kept knocking them to the ground, binding them there with cold, oppressive tendrils of sheer will. “Kiri,” he called to her; she could hear the dark smile in his voice. “What would you do to save this man?”
Movement again, flurried thrusts and parries, advances and retreats; the lich was speaking again, dragging Ganeous away, his body phasing between the bars of the cage, and Kiri could barely register the words he was saying. She knew full well what the wretched bastard was trying to do, how he was trying to play on her emotions the same way that he’d done with Euridice and Vrael, with Samone and Malcolm, and god knew who else in this land. He knew how to play on guilt and goodness, and she had to be strong against it.
It was so hard, though, hearing Ganeous’ cries of protest as he battered against the bars, seeing his face shift, agonized as the lich strode back to Kiri, lifting her into the air by her shirt-front, foul breath in her face. Gods above, she didn’t want him hurting like this. Not for her sake.
Euri was standing by the dais before the throne, dressed now in a simple black gown (“Aren’t you supposed to wear something pretty when you come to see me?” the lich had chided her before), her face unreadable as the lich rapped out an order for her to come stand by him.
Euridice took a serene breath. “No.”
Kiri burst into an elated smile.
The lich was speaking again, but Kiri couldn’t even register his words, so overjoyed to hear Euridice even briefly in command of her own free will, and the fight ahead looked a little less bleak.
But only a little. The Charming still held Kirjava, and he thrust her up against the bars, face-first towards the captive Ganeous inside. “Now look at him,” the lich smiled darkly, scraping her face against the hard corner of the cage. Kiri bit her tongue, a thin trickle of blood running down her cheek, but she would not betray Ganeous by flinching away, and she wouldn’t let him see her hurting. She couldn’t afford for him to see her hurting, couldn’t afford for him to be too worried about her to focus on this fight. Had to be strong.
“Such sweet eyes,” the Charming whispered, chuckling. “What would you give to see him safe? Is he worth it?”
Face bruised and bleeding, Kiri’s eyes sought out Ganeous’, between the slits and cracks in the armor. Yes, she said in all but voice. Her hand shot out to take his, fingers closing on fingers.
Resolve strengthened, she half turned to look at their captor, eyes hard. “And is this how you’ll treat her? Your love? When you bring her back to life and she hates you for what you’ve become?”
The lich uttered a low rumble, crushed her harder against the cage, but Euridice took up the taunt as well with her well-worn smirk firmly in place. “Yes, how will she feel about all of us brides?” With deliberate, slow contempt, she mounted the little dais and sat on the lich’s throne. “I don’t think she’d like that. Could be considered cheating.”
“More than cheating,” Kiri said bluntly. “You’ve become a monstrous lout. Is this what you’ll do to her when you find out she doesn’t love you anymore?”
She’d hoped it would be enough, that they could keep taunting the monster, but his resolve would not be shaken, not now, not when he was so close to achieving his end. He loosened his grip on Kiri, letting her drop to the stone floor as he regarded her coolly. “Trying to talk your way out of this. It won’t work.” Kiri winced, huddled on the ground in a daze, barely noting as above her, the lich’s head snapped back to look at Euridice who was saying something.
No… casting something…
Del’ter’hlor frowned like thunder, and his lips moved in words to stop Euridice, but she repeated the first incantation hard on the heels of his counterspell, her second attempt ringing loud and clear over his countermand of her first.
And in a flash of black and purple and white, Mauri came free.
The lich snarled. “Fine. Then she dies.”
“You first, Ugly.” Mauri flew at him, blades singing through the thick, dank air, and Del’ter’hlor whipped around to meet her.
She was fast, so fast—her long limbs, which sometimes looked masculine, even awkward when held in stillness, moved with all the speed and precision of a tight-wound metal trap—but arcane entanglements flew out from the lich’s fingertips, binding her down as he strode over to pin her to the floor.
Del’ter’hlor shook his head, bemused, and knelt by Mauri, a knife in hand. “Perhaps I’ll take hers, then?…” He smiled darkly at Kirjava.
“Take my…?” Mauri laughed, coughed, grimacing as he pressed her to the floor. “Oh, Ugly, you must be getting desperate, if you want a soul like mine…”
The Charming merely laughed. Kiri flinched as the lich lowered the knife to Mauri, and glanced between the two women, as if waiting for one to say something, beg him to stop. When neither did, the Charming let out a little chuckle and let the knife fall, slicing off one of Mauri’s fingers, and rising again to take the next one as blood, nearer to black than red, in the cavern’s shadows, stained her white skin.
“Stop!” Ganeous cried, hammering against the cage. “My soul! My soul for theirs!”
The Charming took him in drolly, looked back at Kiri. “You see what you’ve done now?”
Kiri swallowed her fear, watching confused as Euridice stepped back, looked away. “I’m sure he’ll make a very pretty bride for you, Charming,” Kirjava stammered. “Will seeing me miserable help you get her back?”
“Shut your mouth.”
“Will seeing me weep for him mean that you weep less for her?”
“I said quiet.” He hurled her to the ground, knocking the wind out of her.
“My soul,” Ganeous repeated, hands white-knuckled on the bars. “For theirs. Just let them go.”
Kiri looked back at him, terrified. “Ganeous, don’t!”
The lich shook his head with sad, amused resignation, as if he were a reluctant parent admonishing an unruly child. He knelt down to Kiri, gesturing grandly to the caged paladin behind her and to Mauri, stubbornly trying to staunch the flow of blood from her knuckles. “You could have prevented this, you know,” he said, voice thick with mock regret. “You could have made this easier on everyone. But I suppose now we’ll have to do things the hard way.”
“Yes,” said Euridice, “yes, we will.”
With a hiss of surprise, the lich turned to see Euridice, clad in armor once more, sword and shield in hand. Blade held high, she charged; the lich’s attention diverted, Mauri’s bonds fell away and she too sprang.
And now the fight was on in earnest, with Euridice and Mauri on either side of Del’ter’hlor. The report of crashing steel echoed so loud that Kiri could barely hurl the few, pitiful remaining spells she had, and around the lich, Euri and Mauri were moving so fast that Kiri could hardly see where she was shooting, scarcely make out when arrows found their marks, barely notice that they weren’t making a dent.
Ganeous struck the bars of his enclosure in blind frustration. “Bring him closer!” he shouted, his cry scarcely audible.
Demon after twisted demon, Del’ter’hlor called up out of the ranks of his thralldom—here, an enormous, writhing creature of tentacles, there a hulking balor—and at least those, towering high above, Kiri could see clearly enough to shoot down, keep them off of the melee. The three fighters inched back toward Ganeous’ cage, and the enclosed paladin managed to reach out and strike at the Charming a few times before the fray migrated again.
Kiri wasn’t even vaguely aware how much time had passed, but all three women were on the ground, now, cool green tendrils holding them still. His face dark under the hood, the lich turned to her. “You can end this,” he told Kiri firmly, bringing a foot down on one of Euridice’s wings, the other on Mauri’s hand. “Just give me your name; give me your soul!”
She fought the urge to cry out, Yes! Whatever you ask, just let my friends be! She was silent.
“So unoriginal,” Mauri muttered, her face a mask of pain.
Del’ter’hlor advanced on Kirjava, who was flattened against Ganeous cage, as if in some absurd world, her being between him and the lich would do anything to protect her knight. Mauri’s face was sickly, twisted with pain, and Euridice’s right wing wasn’t flexing as easily as it usually did, but the two of them rose, summoning their blades and their strength as they threw themselves back into the fray.
They were taking their toll on him, but it was so slow, so goddamn painfully slow… Kiri watched, pained, as she fired her last spells from a distance, hurled useless arrows, even adding a few vials of holy water to the assault. Oh, if only Hound were here, and if only Ganeous were out of the cage…
Euridice bore down on Del’ter’hlor, forcing him back against Mauri’s waiting blades, Mauri whose dark blood stained the floor, who was losing mobility in her injured hand, her blades still coming fast but not as sure and precise as was their usual practice, who each second sank closer to death. The lich, who had been favoring Euri for the last few seconds, grinned and turned swiftly to finish off Mauri.
He was not quick enough, though; with the speed of a loosed arrow, Mauri plucked a narrow bottle from her belt and downed a potion. Blood dried, flesh repaired, and the lich let out a howl of frustration; it seemed like the hundredth that Mauri had taken that evening. “How many of those do you have?”
Mauri grinned and spat blood. “Plenty.”
Euridice took advantage of the brief reprieve and slashed down at Del’ter’hlor’s exposed back, all of her righteous anger—for Vrael, for Sparrow, for the Charming’s innocent victims in Nordock, and god damn it, for herself—drove her sword deeper into the bastard’s flesh. She smiled as he screamed and turned on her once again, calling up more demons to fight for him, crying out for her and her friends to die, die, die, but they would not die, and they would not stop. They could exhaust themselves of everything they had, Euri thought as she watched Kiri dash in to help Mauri, who had fallen back, and they would not stop. They would not die.
They would end this.
The world was a blur, now—endless blow after endless blow, each of them taking turns to tending each other as they were driven back. Ganeous kept trying to extend more potions to them, through the bars of the cage, but Del’ter’hlor got there first, smashing the glass against the iron bars. Kiri kept firing from a distance, but every so often, the lich would escape the rush of swords to strike at her as well, and as he knocked her down one last time, something in Euridice snapped. Hands extended, drawing on the arcane well inside her, she hurled fire at the cage, and the man inside fell back, scorched but triumphant as he forced his way out of the broken, twisted bars to add his steel to the fight.
And it was only time, now, time before this ended. Mauri’s bandages were coming loose, soaked crimson, her hand numb with loss of blood; Kiri was limping badly, leaning unsteadily against a rocky outcropping, and even Ganeous, only just joining the battle in earnest, was starting to lose blood faster than he could heal himself. But they did not stop.
The lich fell. Euridice let out an exultant cry, and her skeletal hand shot out to snatch up the monstrosity’s soul, devouring its life as it fled the dark body.
For a moment, the world was very still.
Then, in a white hot rush, a river of what might have been souls erupted into the room, teeming around Del’ter’hlor and Euridice, and the three extraneous fragments of devoured souls that lurked in her mind screamed like hellfire, a chorus of clamorous protest, leaving her dizzy, sick, and utterly incapable of anything. She felt hard stone at her back, realized belatedly that she must have fallen to the ground, understood vaguely that they were calling to her in a panic, but she could make out nothing in any of it, only voices, voices, voices, battering against the back of her eyelids, clutching at every strain of her psyche.
Ganeous and Kiri were knelt beside her convulsing body, trying to keep her from hurting herself; Mauri stood over them, clutching the tattered bandage to her hand. “What’s happening?” she whispered raggedly.
Kiri’s brow furrowed. “Her soul… it’s trying to force its way back in, trying to force out the other souls that are in her.”
Mauri swallowed, dizzy with pain and lost blood, too tired to think through anything that was going on. “Then… as horrible as it looks, it’s alright for her?”
“No. It could kill her.”
A new voice joined the trio crouched around Euridice, a strident tenor touched with arrogance and rife with annoyance. “Oh, will you let go already, for god’s sake?”
Ganeous blinked, looking up. There was almost nothing there, but for a slight shimmer in the air, the suggestion of a figure, the line of a face, all tenuously connected to Euridice, tied to her with ethereal ephemera.
Kiri’s jaw hit the floor as she realized who the ghost was. “Vrael? What do we do?”
“WELL, HOW THE HELL SHOULD I KNOW?”
Euridice shook again, a tortured scream wrenching out of her. The river of souls was coursing faster, bursting out more insistently. Three souls in her heart screamed, a triad of misery. “I can’t,” she sobbed, tears bright against the cave’s gloom. “I don’t want to let go…”
“Fine!” the ghost spat, turning away from her furiously. “You ask me for help, and then you turn around and ignore me; fine, I’m mostly free already…” Vrael’s spectral form examined himself for the first time, as if suddenly pleased to be back in the spirit world. “Ooh. Actually, I kind of like this…”
“I don’t want to let go,” Euridice whimpered again, her voice faint against the rush of whispers and air as newly freed souls brushed past them all.
Kiri rested a hand on Euri’s shoulder. “But you have to,” she said quietly.
Beside her, she heard Ganeous murmur agreement. Kirjava looked up at the souls teeming through the air and then back down at her friend, reaching out to gently stroke her face, lined with tears and pain. “It’s alright, Euridice. It’s fine. You’re going to be fine. Just let them out. Let them go...”
“I’m probably not even here,” the ghost added, his smirk coming through in his voice. “You’re just imagining me. So let me the hell out.”
Euridice shook her head, arching back in agony again at the barrage on her spirit, and the ghost, Vrael, added his cry of frustrated agony to her own, composure crumpling, doubling over in tortured anguish. When he spoke again, they could hear the taut effort that it took him to speak. “Euridice, please, you have to do this…” His plea was cut off with another burst, and he shrank back again, gasping in pain.
Eyes clenched shut, tears spilling over anew, Euridice could hear nothing and everything. Above the screams in her mind, she could faintly sense Kiri stroking her cheek, whispering gentle, insistent comfort, could feel Ganeous, willing her to be strong, could see Mauri saying words that meant she had to do what Kiri and Vrael were saying. Vrael was crying out to her, above the rest, telling her that he was just a figment of her imagination. The liar. The bastard. Her love.
Euridice shuddered, reaching out a mental hand to grasp at his. She didn’t want this, gods, she didn’t want to leave him behind. She didn’t want to be alone.
In her mind’s eye, she saw Vrael’s hand respond to hers, gentle pressure on her mental fingertips. Not alone. Never alone.
She clung to him.
Let me go.
You’re hurting me. Your keeping me here is agony.
You’re tearing me apart.
Let me go.
She could keep him safe, keep him with her.
Euridice… please…
This hurts so much.
Make this stop.
Let me go.
She wrapped him in an intangible embrace, even as he shuddered and cried out.
There are ways of bringing me back.
Just not like this. Anything but this.
You’re tearing me apart.
Let me go.
I’m begging you.
He was shaking in her arms, with his head against her head.
Let me go.
Vrael shuddered in her mind, screamed in a wash of pain. It felt like a long time before Euridice felt strong enough to silently reply.
Only because I love you.
She exhaled. Three souls poured out of her, one soul poured in, and Euridice fell still.
Mauri looked at Ganeous, and Ganeous at Kiri, who hesitantly put her fingers to Euridice’s pulse. Kiri exhaled. “She’s alright…” Breathing deeply, she swept a thin brush of hair out of Euri’s face, plastered to her skin with sweat and blood. “…I think.”
The three of them sat beside her a moment, just breathing, dizzy with relief at merely being alive.
It was over.
Ganeous easily lifted Euri’s peacefully unconscious form, cradling her against his chest. “We should leave this place.”
Peering at the ground and clutching her bloodied hand, Mauri nodded. “You don’t suppose my finger survived all the swords and magic that were flying, do you? I really hope there’s some way that a priest could re-attach it…”
Ganeous smiled slightly. “If a priest can restore a life, I’m sure he can reattach a finger.”
Mauri nodded, re-wrapping the bandage tight around her hand; from one of her pockets, she withdrew the ring and handed it to Kiri. “Oh, and speaking of that, we’re going to have to retrieve a very cranky old man from the Fugue when we get back...”
Kirjava took the ring, solemnly silent; Ganeous and Mauri both leaned in to touch her shoulder, and Kiri looked around the cave one last time. The one who had been called the Charming was stretched on the floor, almost comically grotesque, his rightful soul destroyed, his captive souls freed. They would leave this place, and never again would it mean anything more than a memory.
Closing her eyes, Kiri turned the ring on her finger and let brilliant blue light scoop up the four of them and sweep them home to Brosna.
The dragon had been easy, the wards simple. The phylactery’s guardian had fallen with, all things considered, not too much trouble.
And now, this. What’d they’d known all evening would be coming.
The voice of Del’ter’hlor the Charming, resonant and sepulchral, echoed through the chamber, and Kiri stared in desperation at the woman with the red dragon wings, who’d stood alongside her only moments ago, gleaming sword in hand. “Euridice,” the lich smiled thinly. “Destroy them. Utterly.”
Kirjava didn’t wait. She couldn’t. Knowing that she and her friend spoke the same silent apology, she hurled the first spell at Euri as she advanced.
Ganeous raised his sword and flew into the melee with a roar; Kiri couldn’t even see which one of the two the paladin was lunging at. Sparks flew as steel met steel, arcane energy meeting arcane energy. Kiri bit her lip as she unleashed another column of fire at the two. It wasn’t supposed to work like this. Hound and Mauri should have been fighting alongside them. But the lanky albino woman was rigid stone in one of the cages before them, and the old man was nowhere to be seen. Kiri’s heart sank.
Everything was moving too fast; the Charming kept knocking them to the ground, binding them there with cold, oppressive tendrils of sheer will. “Kiri,” he called to her; she could hear the dark smile in his voice. “What would you do to save this man?”
Movement again, flurried thrusts and parries, advances and retreats; the lich was speaking again, dragging Ganeous away, his body phasing between the bars of the cage, and Kiri could barely register the words he was saying. She knew full well what the wretched bastard was trying to do, how he was trying to play on her emotions the same way that he’d done with Euridice and Vrael, with Samone and Malcolm, and god knew who else in this land. He knew how to play on guilt and goodness, and she had to be strong against it.
It was so hard, though, hearing Ganeous’ cries of protest as he battered against the bars, seeing his face shift, agonized as the lich strode back to Kiri, lifting her into the air by her shirt-front, foul breath in her face. Gods above, she didn’t want him hurting like this. Not for her sake.
Euri was standing by the dais before the throne, dressed now in a simple black gown (“Aren’t you supposed to wear something pretty when you come to see me?” the lich had chided her before), her face unreadable as the lich rapped out an order for her to come stand by him.
Euridice took a serene breath. “No.”
Kiri burst into an elated smile.
The lich was speaking again, but Kiri couldn’t even register his words, so overjoyed to hear Euridice even briefly in command of her own free will, and the fight ahead looked a little less bleak.
But only a little. The Charming still held Kirjava, and he thrust her up against the bars, face-first towards the captive Ganeous inside. “Now look at him,” the lich smiled darkly, scraping her face against the hard corner of the cage. Kiri bit her tongue, a thin trickle of blood running down her cheek, but she would not betray Ganeous by flinching away, and she wouldn’t let him see her hurting. She couldn’t afford for him to see her hurting, couldn’t afford for him to be too worried about her to focus on this fight. Had to be strong.
“Such sweet eyes,” the Charming whispered, chuckling. “What would you give to see him safe? Is he worth it?”
Face bruised and bleeding, Kiri’s eyes sought out Ganeous’, between the slits and cracks in the armor. Yes, she said in all but voice. Her hand shot out to take his, fingers closing on fingers.
Resolve strengthened, she half turned to look at their captor, eyes hard. “And is this how you’ll treat her? Your love? When you bring her back to life and she hates you for what you’ve become?”
The lich uttered a low rumble, crushed her harder against the cage, but Euridice took up the taunt as well with her well-worn smirk firmly in place. “Yes, how will she feel about all of us brides?” With deliberate, slow contempt, she mounted the little dais and sat on the lich’s throne. “I don’t think she’d like that. Could be considered cheating.”
“More than cheating,” Kiri said bluntly. “You’ve become a monstrous lout. Is this what you’ll do to her when you find out she doesn’t love you anymore?”
She’d hoped it would be enough, that they could keep taunting the monster, but his resolve would not be shaken, not now, not when he was so close to achieving his end. He loosened his grip on Kiri, letting her drop to the stone floor as he regarded her coolly. “Trying to talk your way out of this. It won’t work.” Kiri winced, huddled on the ground in a daze, barely noting as above her, the lich’s head snapped back to look at Euridice who was saying something.
No… casting something…
Del’ter’hlor frowned like thunder, and his lips moved in words to stop Euridice, but she repeated the first incantation hard on the heels of his counterspell, her second attempt ringing loud and clear over his countermand of her first.
And in a flash of black and purple and white, Mauri came free.
The lich snarled. “Fine. Then she dies.”
“You first, Ugly.” Mauri flew at him, blades singing through the thick, dank air, and Del’ter’hlor whipped around to meet her.
She was fast, so fast—her long limbs, which sometimes looked masculine, even awkward when held in stillness, moved with all the speed and precision of a tight-wound metal trap—but arcane entanglements flew out from the lich’s fingertips, binding her down as he strode over to pin her to the floor.
Del’ter’hlor shook his head, bemused, and knelt by Mauri, a knife in hand. “Perhaps I’ll take hers, then?…” He smiled darkly at Kirjava.
“Take my…?” Mauri laughed, coughed, grimacing as he pressed her to the floor. “Oh, Ugly, you must be getting desperate, if you want a soul like mine…”
The Charming merely laughed. Kiri flinched as the lich lowered the knife to Mauri, and glanced between the two women, as if waiting for one to say something, beg him to stop. When neither did, the Charming let out a little chuckle and let the knife fall, slicing off one of Mauri’s fingers, and rising again to take the next one as blood, nearer to black than red, in the cavern’s shadows, stained her white skin.
“Stop!” Ganeous cried, hammering against the cage. “My soul! My soul for theirs!”
The Charming took him in drolly, looked back at Kiri. “You see what you’ve done now?”
Kiri swallowed her fear, watching confused as Euridice stepped back, looked away. “I’m sure he’ll make a very pretty bride for you, Charming,” Kirjava stammered. “Will seeing me miserable help you get her back?”
“Shut your mouth.”
“Will seeing me weep for him mean that you weep less for her?”
“I said quiet.” He hurled her to the ground, knocking the wind out of her.
“My soul,” Ganeous repeated, hands white-knuckled on the bars. “For theirs. Just let them go.”
Kiri looked back at him, terrified. “Ganeous, don’t!”
The lich shook his head with sad, amused resignation, as if he were a reluctant parent admonishing an unruly child. He knelt down to Kiri, gesturing grandly to the caged paladin behind her and to Mauri, stubbornly trying to staunch the flow of blood from her knuckles. “You could have prevented this, you know,” he said, voice thick with mock regret. “You could have made this easier on everyone. But I suppose now we’ll have to do things the hard way.”
“Yes,” said Euridice, “yes, we will.”
With a hiss of surprise, the lich turned to see Euridice, clad in armor once more, sword and shield in hand. Blade held high, she charged; the lich’s attention diverted, Mauri’s bonds fell away and she too sprang.
And now the fight was on in earnest, with Euridice and Mauri on either side of Del’ter’hlor. The report of crashing steel echoed so loud that Kiri could barely hurl the few, pitiful remaining spells she had, and around the lich, Euri and Mauri were moving so fast that Kiri could hardly see where she was shooting, scarcely make out when arrows found their marks, barely notice that they weren’t making a dent.
Ganeous struck the bars of his enclosure in blind frustration. “Bring him closer!” he shouted, his cry scarcely audible.
Demon after twisted demon, Del’ter’hlor called up out of the ranks of his thralldom—here, an enormous, writhing creature of tentacles, there a hulking balor—and at least those, towering high above, Kiri could see clearly enough to shoot down, keep them off of the melee. The three fighters inched back toward Ganeous’ cage, and the enclosed paladin managed to reach out and strike at the Charming a few times before the fray migrated again.
Kiri wasn’t even vaguely aware how much time had passed, but all three women were on the ground, now, cool green tendrils holding them still. His face dark under the hood, the lich turned to her. “You can end this,” he told Kiri firmly, bringing a foot down on one of Euridice’s wings, the other on Mauri’s hand. “Just give me your name; give me your soul!”
She fought the urge to cry out, Yes! Whatever you ask, just let my friends be! She was silent.
“So unoriginal,” Mauri muttered, her face a mask of pain.
Del’ter’hlor advanced on Kirjava, who was flattened against Ganeous cage, as if in some absurd world, her being between him and the lich would do anything to protect her knight. Mauri’s face was sickly, twisted with pain, and Euridice’s right wing wasn’t flexing as easily as it usually did, but the two of them rose, summoning their blades and their strength as they threw themselves back into the fray.
They were taking their toll on him, but it was so slow, so goddamn painfully slow… Kiri watched, pained, as she fired her last spells from a distance, hurled useless arrows, even adding a few vials of holy water to the assault. Oh, if only Hound were here, and if only Ganeous were out of the cage…
Euridice bore down on Del’ter’hlor, forcing him back against Mauri’s waiting blades, Mauri whose dark blood stained the floor, who was losing mobility in her injured hand, her blades still coming fast but not as sure and precise as was their usual practice, who each second sank closer to death. The lich, who had been favoring Euri for the last few seconds, grinned and turned swiftly to finish off Mauri.
He was not quick enough, though; with the speed of a loosed arrow, Mauri plucked a narrow bottle from her belt and downed a potion. Blood dried, flesh repaired, and the lich let out a howl of frustration; it seemed like the hundredth that Mauri had taken that evening. “How many of those do you have?”
Mauri grinned and spat blood. “Plenty.”
Euridice took advantage of the brief reprieve and slashed down at Del’ter’hlor’s exposed back, all of her righteous anger—for Vrael, for Sparrow, for the Charming’s innocent victims in Nordock, and god damn it, for herself—drove her sword deeper into the bastard’s flesh. She smiled as he screamed and turned on her once again, calling up more demons to fight for him, crying out for her and her friends to die, die, die, but they would not die, and they would not stop. They could exhaust themselves of everything they had, Euri thought as she watched Kiri dash in to help Mauri, who had fallen back, and they would not stop. They would not die.
They would end this.
The world was a blur, now—endless blow after endless blow, each of them taking turns to tending each other as they were driven back. Ganeous kept trying to extend more potions to them, through the bars of the cage, but Del’ter’hlor got there first, smashing the glass against the iron bars. Kiri kept firing from a distance, but every so often, the lich would escape the rush of swords to strike at her as well, and as he knocked her down one last time, something in Euridice snapped. Hands extended, drawing on the arcane well inside her, she hurled fire at the cage, and the man inside fell back, scorched but triumphant as he forced his way out of the broken, twisted bars to add his steel to the fight.
And it was only time, now, time before this ended. Mauri’s bandages were coming loose, soaked crimson, her hand numb with loss of blood; Kiri was limping badly, leaning unsteadily against a rocky outcropping, and even Ganeous, only just joining the battle in earnest, was starting to lose blood faster than he could heal himself. But they did not stop.
The lich fell. Euridice let out an exultant cry, and her skeletal hand shot out to snatch up the monstrosity’s soul, devouring its life as it fled the dark body.
For a moment, the world was very still.
Then, in a white hot rush, a river of what might have been souls erupted into the room, teeming around Del’ter’hlor and Euridice, and the three extraneous fragments of devoured souls that lurked in her mind screamed like hellfire, a chorus of clamorous protest, leaving her dizzy, sick, and utterly incapable of anything. She felt hard stone at her back, realized belatedly that she must have fallen to the ground, understood vaguely that they were calling to her in a panic, but she could make out nothing in any of it, only voices, voices, voices, battering against the back of her eyelids, clutching at every strain of her psyche.
Ganeous and Kiri were knelt beside her convulsing body, trying to keep her from hurting herself; Mauri stood over them, clutching the tattered bandage to her hand. “What’s happening?” she whispered raggedly.
Kiri’s brow furrowed. “Her soul… it’s trying to force its way back in, trying to force out the other souls that are in her.”
Mauri swallowed, dizzy with pain and lost blood, too tired to think through anything that was going on. “Then… as horrible as it looks, it’s alright for her?”
“No. It could kill her.”
A new voice joined the trio crouched around Euridice, a strident tenor touched with arrogance and rife with annoyance. “Oh, will you let go already, for god’s sake?”
Ganeous blinked, looking up. There was almost nothing there, but for a slight shimmer in the air, the suggestion of a figure, the line of a face, all tenuously connected to Euridice, tied to her with ethereal ephemera.
Kiri’s jaw hit the floor as she realized who the ghost was. “Vrael? What do we do?”
“WELL, HOW THE HELL SHOULD I KNOW?”
Euridice shook again, a tortured scream wrenching out of her. The river of souls was coursing faster, bursting out more insistently. Three souls in her heart screamed, a triad of misery. “I can’t,” she sobbed, tears bright against the cave’s gloom. “I don’t want to let go…”
“Fine!” the ghost spat, turning away from her furiously. “You ask me for help, and then you turn around and ignore me; fine, I’m mostly free already…” Vrael’s spectral form examined himself for the first time, as if suddenly pleased to be back in the spirit world. “Ooh. Actually, I kind of like this…”
“I don’t want to let go,” Euridice whimpered again, her voice faint against the rush of whispers and air as newly freed souls brushed past them all.
Kiri rested a hand on Euri’s shoulder. “But you have to,” she said quietly.
Beside her, she heard Ganeous murmur agreement. Kirjava looked up at the souls teeming through the air and then back down at her friend, reaching out to gently stroke her face, lined with tears and pain. “It’s alright, Euridice. It’s fine. You’re going to be fine. Just let them out. Let them go...”
“I’m probably not even here,” the ghost added, his smirk coming through in his voice. “You’re just imagining me. So let me the hell out.”
Euridice shook her head, arching back in agony again at the barrage on her spirit, and the ghost, Vrael, added his cry of frustrated agony to her own, composure crumpling, doubling over in tortured anguish. When he spoke again, they could hear the taut effort that it took him to speak. “Euridice, please, you have to do this…” His plea was cut off with another burst, and he shrank back again, gasping in pain.
Eyes clenched shut, tears spilling over anew, Euridice could hear nothing and everything. Above the screams in her mind, she could faintly sense Kiri stroking her cheek, whispering gentle, insistent comfort, could feel Ganeous, willing her to be strong, could see Mauri saying words that meant she had to do what Kiri and Vrael were saying. Vrael was crying out to her, above the rest, telling her that he was just a figment of her imagination. The liar. The bastard. Her love.
Euridice shuddered, reaching out a mental hand to grasp at his. She didn’t want this, gods, she didn’t want to leave him behind. She didn’t want to be alone.
In her mind’s eye, she saw Vrael’s hand respond to hers, gentle pressure on her mental fingertips. Not alone. Never alone.
She clung to him.
Let me go.
You’re hurting me. Your keeping me here is agony.
You’re tearing me apart.
Let me go.
She could keep him safe, keep him with her.
Euridice… please…
This hurts so much.
Make this stop.
Let me go.
She wrapped him in an intangible embrace, even as he shuddered and cried out.
There are ways of bringing me back.
Just not like this. Anything but this.
You’re tearing me apart.
Let me go.
I’m begging you.
He was shaking in her arms, with his head against her head.
Let me go.
Vrael shuddered in her mind, screamed in a wash of pain. It felt like a long time before Euridice felt strong enough to silently reply.
Only because I love you.
She exhaled. Three souls poured out of her, one soul poured in, and Euridice fell still.
Mauri looked at Ganeous, and Ganeous at Kiri, who hesitantly put her fingers to Euridice’s pulse. Kiri exhaled. “She’s alright…” Breathing deeply, she swept a thin brush of hair out of Euri’s face, plastered to her skin with sweat and blood. “…I think.”
The three of them sat beside her a moment, just breathing, dizzy with relief at merely being alive.
It was over.
Ganeous easily lifted Euri’s peacefully unconscious form, cradling her against his chest. “We should leave this place.”
Peering at the ground and clutching her bloodied hand, Mauri nodded. “You don’t suppose my finger survived all the swords and magic that were flying, do you? I really hope there’s some way that a priest could re-attach it…”
Ganeous smiled slightly. “If a priest can restore a life, I’m sure he can reattach a finger.”
Mauri nodded, re-wrapping the bandage tight around her hand; from one of her pockets, she withdrew the ring and handed it to Kiri. “Oh, and speaking of that, we’re going to have to retrieve a very cranky old man from the Fugue when we get back...”
Kirjava took the ring, solemnly silent; Ganeous and Mauri both leaned in to touch her shoulder, and Kiri looked around the cave one last time. The one who had been called the Charming was stretched on the floor, almost comically grotesque, his rightful soul destroyed, his captive souls freed. They would leave this place, and never again would it mean anything more than a memory.
Closing her eyes, Kiri turned the ring on her finger and let brilliant blue light scoop up the four of them and sweep them home to Brosna.