Home » Great Library at Hoeth » Book of Tales » Voice of the Phoenix » Voice of the Phoenix, Chapter Eleven
| Voice of the Phoenix, Chapter Eleven |
| by Calarion Sapherior |
It was mid-day, with the sun from the zenith of its path sending golden rays that raised a sickly-feeling sweat on Howell, which mixed with the congealing and fresh blood all over him. It stung, a lot, but he barely noticed it. With Eilinel’s death, his body had become immune to the casual sadism inflicted on him by his captors every time they stopped. His mind was wracked by a far deeper torture than any of their petty arts could device.
The dark elves were run with their long loping steps through plains now. They had crossed the Arduil, the mighty torrent of white foam that marked the boundary between Avelorn and Ellyrion. The Annulii Mountains loomed black-grey and ominous before them, clawing into the sky and tearing great furrows from it, and beyond...beyond, the cursed city of Anlec, where the Dark Elves dwelt, and that was a fate Howell’s mind shied from, even in its tortured state.
The dark elves stopped, and the ones carrying Howell dropped him hard on the ground. His head struck the earth, and his vision blurred for a moment.
“We are being pursued!” Seraxa shouted in her inhuman voice – this the voice of all things and none.
Howell’s mind cleared somewhat and he raised his head awkwardly, to gaze past the booted legs of the dark elf raiders to stare upon the horizon.
The forms of elves, small as ants, greeted his eyes there.
The druchii fell into a panic. Rough hands seized Howell, and he could see Regulus being scooped up. The Caledorian swordmaster groaned, and weakly struggled against his captors, which earned him a hard blow to the face that snapped his head to one side.
They stopped again at the foothills of the mountains, as the sun vanished behind them, and the last rays of lights made grotesque shadows through the labyrinth of scattered stones. Howell’s mind had cleared now, and his mind was filled with the thought of escape. The vision of Asuryan’s apparition and his quest had returned to his head with the sight of their pursuit. He felt a new strength run through him. Destiny was upon him. Around him the dark elves lay down their burdens and collapsed, their harsh breathing wheezing out as they tried to recover their strength.
Howell found himself alone for a moment, and cast his gaze around. The strange metallic bonds on his wrists chafed at the sores they had raised up. There had to be some way to release them, but none presented them. Around him now, the druchii were sipping greedily at liquid running from leather water skins, letting some of the golden nectar run down their faces in their eagerness for refreshment. Their hoarse breath was everywhere about him. Slowly, surreptitiously, Howell moved himself, contorting his body to move himself to the far edges of the camp, where he might merge with the surrounding shadows and escape.
A boot struck him in the small of the back, and Howell sprawled, feeling flames in the skin of his face as it ran across the rough ground. The foot rested on his back, and the druchii voice of his captor whispered at him. “No escape...”
A hand seized him and hauled him upright. Howell gasped as he was sat upright against one of the larger rocks. The dark elf before him extended his pouch, and poured cool water slowly into the Caledorian’s throat. Howell’s throat eased as the water ran down it. He realised how dehydrated he had been becoming in the boiling sun of that day, with no refreshments, and felt a sudden ironic surge of gratitude for this dark elf.
“Tell me,” Howell said, his voice still weak. “What do you want with me?”
The dark elf shrugged laconically. “Seraxa is the one who wants you. If it’d been up to any of the rest of us – we’d as like as not just left you where you were.”
Howell frowned. “Not killed us?”
The dark elf laughed quietly. “A fine thing for such a baby-murdering ghoul as yourself to be saying.”
“Why do you call me that?”
“Don’t you?”
“Never!” Howell said with all the indignant fury he could muster. “How dare you accuse me of such things, a worshipper of dark gods as you are?”
“You accuse me..? Never mind,” the druchii whispered back at him. “Here, eat.” He unlaced a small leather pouch and shook out into his hand a few pieces of dried meat, which he held out for the Asur to snatch with his mouth. Howell chewed greedily at the tough, tasteless food, as though it were the finest delicacy to be found on the tables of a Eataine nobleman.
“Kyros,” a sultry voice said over the dark elf’s shoulder, and a pale white hand reached out to caress his face, dropping to his torso and continuing down. “I shall talk to the prisoner now.”
Kyros’ face was flushed as he stood, and he stumbled away. Seraxa watched him go, a terrible expression of bestial desire twisting her beautiful features, and then swift as a striking snake her head snapped around to Howell. He shuddered involuntarily, for her gaze was horrible in its unblinking fixation.
“You must do as I want,” she hissed urgently, and flung herself forward. Ivory legs clamped around his chest, and Howell was flung against the rock hard by the force of her body as Seraxa straddled him. Her breath came in short gasping pants, and her pink tongue licked over her lips. Howell felt revolted.
And then she changed again, both hands shooting forward to clamp around his shoulders with a force beyond anything he had felt before. How such fragile arms could contain such power, he knew not. Her eyes burned into him.
“Surrender,” she growled ferally. “Worship Me as your god, and I shall spare you.” Her hands tighened, and Howell let out an involuntary scream of pain and the fingers punctured the skin and flesh of his shoulders, tearing deep in. Her eyes were bloody-red orbs and locked on his.
She was inside his mind now. Asuryan has forsaken you, the voice said, niggling and teasing. He has left you here to die. Surely accepting, giving in to such power, would be the only path left...the only path one of wisdom could take.
The red eyes of Seraxa Veruathil burned through his mind and deep into his soul, and for a heartbeat stretching into a lifetime Howell was lost.
And then, in the depths of his soul, the crimson-eyed glare found something that made it falter and quail. In that final deepest place in his soul, two white eyes shone back, radiant with the power of all time and all things. Behind the eternal truth it represented, Seraxa’s enchantments fell back in disarray.
Howell’s mind returned to the present, and the sorceress astride him whose face was shaken. The willpower that had suffused him since his sojourn in the Shrine of Asuryan flowed through his every vein, and with a sudden return of strength he flung his body upright. Seraxa screamed shrilly and fell to the ground as Howell’s strength returned.
“I know who you would have me worship,” the Caledorian said grimly to the cowering sorceress as he staggered up. “You serve the Chaos Gods!”
Seraxa laughed, and Howell’s confidence shook as her body wracked itself with the weirdly echoing, sickly laughter. “Fool!” a croaking, foul voice gargled in ever varying cadence. “I AM the Chaos Gods!”
Her mouth opened, impossibly wide, and with a hacking cough a foul green slime vomited up from her throat onto Howell. He shouted involuntarily with revulsion as the clotted vomit covered his face and hair. It was stringy and glutinous, and revolted him.
“See how you deal with Nurgle’s Rot, Servant of Asuryan!” she howled in her foul diseased voice, and Howell’s eyes widened with panic. He tried to scream, but the vomit on him would not let him, constricting over him, cutting off his breath...and sinking into him, pouring through his skin into his flesh. Now he did manage to scream, howling in terror and revulsion as the pale viscous mass entered him, entered his nose and mouth and eyes and skin, entered the clotting wound over his gut, entered his skin and his very being. His vision was hazy, and the world swirled about him. Before him, Seraxa laughed wheezingly, maniacally, but also seemed to be crying, her face an image of pure terror and heartsick fear and revulsion.
And then another scream joined his. Seraxa spun, and looked behind her at the majestic vision of a line of silver-mail armour knights on beautiful white steeds that were trampling down the foremost of the dark elves. Shouts of panic and fear came from the scattered druchii as the attackers poured through them, cleaving them down.
Seraxa disappeared with a muffled shriek, scrambling away as the Asur knights swept away her bodyguard.
The world turned red, and Howell’s vision blurred. Before him, a knight wielding a delicate longsword slashed adeptly at Kyros, severing the dark elf’s arm. Kyros fell to his feet and burst into disbelieving tears, before the next blow opened his throat. The red spray from the wound spun into the rest of the world, and the rest of the world spun into it, and it was all
...spinning...
...spinning...
...she was crying as she laughed...
...spinning...
...spinning...
...I am dying, the poison is killing me...
...spinning...
...spinning...
...... |
|
