And yet another chapter of A Decaying World, the events of which are only possible because the last chapter added something that wasn't originally planned. But hey, the game this story is based on wasn't particularly exciting. So this might be for the better.
Chapter 20: Splinter of Desolation
Beautiful crimson hair fluttered in front of Drake's unseeing eyes while someone pressed a wet piece of cloth onto his aching flesh. It corrugated like the ocean, slowly repairing the damage done by Feyadal's devastating attack. He could have been healed minutes ago, but everyone present was either screaming, howling, complaining, demanding, or simply sitting in the grass and staring off into the distance, with a horrified expression etched into their skin.
Upon realizing that, a question popped into Drake mind: if no one was paying him any attention, then who was the person whose flesh smelled like roses and whose hands were caressing his burning cheeks?
He forced his eyes open and just about caught a glimpse of a face long gone.
“Wait!”
His right hand reached for the retreating figure and the sky burst into flames. It was accompanied by a gust of wind that carried the stank of decay right into Drake's nose. He chocked and reached for his throat as his vision blurred, turning dark at the edges as if smoke was seeping into his eyes.
“Why don't you just give up? The end of the world is rapidly approaching. There is nothing anyone can do to stop it.” Drake remembered this voice from before everything went to shit. But he found himself unable to place its origin.
“No, you have to belie—”
Metal streaking through the air and cutting through flesh scattered Emily's voice into the wind, replacing it with the screams of all those who had perished at the hands of the black lightning.
“All you can believe in is your impotence. Just look at the corpses lining your path.” The flames began to swirl, twisting themselves into burning renditions of the past. “The soldiers of Pagan, who were nothing more than cannon fodder. A respected general. A powerful wizard. All those who died in the fire, and all those who perished soon after. Not to mention your father and girlfriend.”
Drake tried to close his eyes when Glenn was being consumed by smoke that took the place of shadows, but all he achieved was to flutter with his eyelids. The scene then shifted to his unconscious form, with Emily hunched over him. Arlington had already been destroyed at that point, which is why Drake stopped resisting and stared intently at what happened next.
Emily shook his body, yelled words the fire didn't replay. And during all that, she never noticed a figure approaching her from behind. Drake couldn't make out who it was, but his muscles tensed when the person extended a hand towards his girlfriend.
It only took a second for her form to fall apart.
No! This can't be true.
Laughter as sharp as a knife cut right into his flesh. “But why would I lie when my goal is to hurt you? She was alive … and then she was dead. All because you couldn't protect her. And while you may not have cared about them, you're also responsible for the deaths of Alyssa's brethren, most of whom never even realized that they were part of a ritual to raise Golgotha from oblivion.”
“Would you stuff it already?”
Drake's shaking hands clawed into the ground as he tried to move his mouth, but all he accomplished was to open it wide, signaling his presence with an unearthly moan.
“We have to do some—”
“Shut up!”
The unending complaints were momentarily silenced by Maximilian's stressed scream. But they resumed after he had taken a single step into Drake's direction, whose body he had placed within the shadow of a rock.
“You have no right to—”
“Enough already!” yelled Alyssa. She was sitting next to a bush, with her hair blowing in the wind, and flexed the muscles of her injured arm while keeping an eye on Feyadal. His chin was resting on his arms, which were in turn propped up by the knees he had pulled close to this body. He did not pay any attention to the bickering, however. Instead, his gaze was focused solely on the black castle and the forest burning around it. “We won't accomplish anything by screaming at each other.”
Alyssa unglued her eyes and looked at what little was left of her group. Only the most skilled of fighters had survived, which wasn't saying much, given her experience in the War. At least twice as much had been alive at the end, but their bodies were now burned to a crisp. And everyone knew who was responsible for their demise.
“There isn't much we can do now,” continued Alyssa. “So we either investigate the castle or try to get to the nearest village and save as many as we can.”
“What about our village?”
“What village? Don't you see where Golgotha has risen? There's nothin...” her gaze fell unto the earth as her voice failed her.
“Are we sure this is Golgotha?” asked Maximilian, who was kneeling in the shadows and pouring blood into Drake's quivering mouth. “I've read the books written by the heroes who fought in its depths, and while they do embellish their actions, they all agree on the fact, that the castle crumbled on their way out.”
Drake choked and coughed up blood. Maximilian quickly raised his left hand, with his forefinger pointing into the air, while wiping his friend's mouth with the other.
“Sorry, I should have paid more attention.” He turned his head back to the elves. “What I am getting at is: couldn't this be an illusion meant to drive fear into our hearts?”
Alyssa shook her head with her eyes closed. “No, it's the genuine article. The power emanating from within might not be as strong as it was back in the day, but there's no mistaking its source.”
“But that was also destroyed!”
The elf's head threatened to unwind when her icy stare pierced Maximilian's flesh. “Don't you think I know that?” her voice was as shrill as the screech of a banshee. The other elves eyed each other nervously and moved away from Alyssa, lest she blow them all away in her rage. “But this”—her finger slashed through the air and came to land on the structure towering even above the World Tree—“is without a doubt Golgotha, the same castle that has brought devastation upon Meceruun a thousand years ago!”
“No need to freak out. I was just trying to make sure...”
Alyssa growled and faced the earth, repressing the urge to scream by keeping her lips pressed together. Cold air with a hint of smoke entered her nostrils as she inhaled deeply. Only when her lungs felt like they would burst did she release it. She repeated the process for about a minute, slowly draining the tension that had built up within her flesh.
Someone cleared his throat next to her, but she kept her eyes glued to the ground and pressed the tips of her left fingers against those of her right. Magic began to flow from one arm into the other, coursing through her magic circuits and then returning to the starting point. It was a technique she had been taught in trying to focus her power and was supposed to take her attention away from the physical plane. But her concentration was so scattered that sparks of pure magic erupted from her hands and burned the grass beneath her feet.
More annoyed than ever, she raised her head and looked at Feyadal. Just a quick glimpse to see how he fared. Their eyes met for a split-second and his turned wide. He rapidly averted his gaze and scratched his head as if nothing had happened.
Alyssa's body lifted off the ground like that of a predator who was about to assault his prey. Magically enhanced steps carried her to Feyadal with lightning speed, upon which she grabbed his arms and pulled him up. He yelped in surprise and reached for her shoulders to steady himself, but she pressed her arms against his chest and chucked him onto the ground.
“Ouch!” He staggered to his feet and rubbed his back. “What are you—”
“Stop looking at me like that! How do you think that makes me feel, when all you do is avoid me otherwise?”
His lips turned into a thin line and his eyes drooped. He had thought about a thousand scenarios that could unfold upon his return, but this was so far from his imagination that he didn't know how to act. Most likely because he had stopped thinking about it after losing what little magic he had.
Eventually, he took a deep breath, stepped towards her, and looked her in the eye. His right hand was about to touch her shoulder before she slapped it away.
Some of the elves had already pressed their hands onto their mouths when Feyadal hit the ground, but now they couldn't contain themselves any longer and broke into laughter.
Alyssa's body trembled and her eyes flared up. She raised her arms into the air and immediately slammed them back down, ramming all of her brethren into the earth, even those who had remained silent. They whined and yelled, but only until they noticed the threatening glare she cast at them over her shoulders.
“Aly, you have to calm down. This isn't the time for—”
“And when will there ever be time?” Her hair fell over her face when her head turned back, covering half of it. “You might not have noticed, but a castle full of monster has just risen where our village lay! We'd be lucky to survive the coming weeks.”
“If at all,” came the hoarse voice of Drake from beside her.
“If you don't have anything useful to add, then just shut up!” Her eyes appeared to be consumed by fire while Drake was being helped into a standing position by Maximilian.
“But I do have something to add.” He looked at where the castle lay, then peered even further into the distance. “Haven't you noticed the storm clouds hovering above the mountains? The ones unleashing black lightning unto the earth?”
The elf furrowed her brow and followed his gaze. A few seconds passed, during which more than a dozen lighting bolts were unleashed on areas hidden by the mountain range.
“What about it? The color might be weird, but—”
“Keep looking!”
Everyone but Maximilian and Feyadal were now looking into the distance. As if to reward their attention, the storm clouds moved further inland, which allowed the lightning to slam into trees and rocks and mountaintops. And everything it came in touch with exploded in rain of dust.
Alyssa scrunched her face in incredulity and shushed her gasping brethren before facing Drake once more. “What is that?”
“The End of Time, the harbinger of Meceruun's destruction. My hometown has already fallen victim to it.” He clenched his fists, replaying the scene of Emily's death in front of his eyes. “And it seems to have followed us all the way here.”
Fury tarnished Alyssa's beautiful face as she pulled an arrow from her quiver and raised her bow into the air. Maximilian drew his blade and Feyadal lunged forward, grabbing Alyssa's arm before she could take aim.
“Don't!”
“He has to take responsibility for what's about to happen!” said Alyssa without looking at Feyadal.
“But I came here to stop it! How was I supposed to know that it would follow me?”
“Stop it how?”
Drake opened his mouth, then closed it very slowly. “I don't know … find someone who can help defeat the cause.” He looked at the ground and rubbed his head. “But that person seems to have been the darkelf I met near our camp.”
“The one who slew my men? Who trapped us with his magic and got even more of them killed? And you didn't think this was worth mentioning?” she screamed and elbowed Feyadal to free her arm. Then she aimed at Drake.
“You didn't need to kno—”
Alyssa let go and Drake ducked out of the way. Maximilian tried to hit the arrow in mid-air, but he only sliced through one of its feathers.
“Come on! How was I supposed to know what would happen? And the one who made a deal with him was Modera, not me. I rejected his help!”
Alyssa's held her trembling hand above her quiver. Drake hadn't gotten up yet, making him an easy target. But Maximilian looked like he would cut her down before she could fire once more.
“How did you even survive your previous encounter with this … this thing?”
Drake gathered himself from the floor, with his arms raised high and with his eyes focused on her bow. “It wasn't moving the first time, so I just ran out of its range. The second time … I don't know. It started following our ship a few days ago but seemed to have disappeared by the time we crashed.”
The storm in Alyssa's eyes turned into a sparkle of inspiration as she lowered her bow. “It … disappeared? So that's why Mimeidr unleashed its power. I should have thought of that.” She turned to the remains of her group. “Listen up! You will hurry to the World Tree and see if it can banish the storm once more. Me and the others will investigate Golgotha in the meantime.”
“Milady, you can't be serious,” interjected the elf with the golden armor. “The vampire got our comrades killed, while that … elf burned them to death!”
Her features hardened and her hands began to sparkle. “Do I look like I'm joking?”
“No … of course not. But what if Mimeidr can't repel the storm again?
“Then we're all doomed,” replied Drake in Alyssa's stead.