RangerWickett
Legend
Episode Three: Dreams of the Dead, Section IV
The church murmured with blistering winds, and the forest outside rustled and crackled, its leaves and branches ablaze. David sat next to his unconscious companion in a cold shadow cast by the old stone walls, but embers floated around him on the winds, glowing. Despite the forest’s seeming lush life in the day, by twilight the trees had been eager to catch fire. Now the entire church was surrounded with flames.
David waited, clutching the black scimitar and his dormant light talisman together. Around his neck he wore another of his talismans, a piece of wood that a friend from home had carved to resemble a dog’s head. It concealed the scent of blood, but it couldn’t keep out the ash and smoke.
Allar coughed and groaned. David wheeled to look at his friend, and opened his mouth to talk, but Allar’s eyes were already open, and he was staring at David intently. David waited for him to talk, then waited a bit longer as Allar looked around with his eyes, staying motionless on the ground.
Finally, Allar said, “I pass out in a church, and you somehow get us both sent to hell. Good job.”
David glared at him.
Allar slowly sat up, then touched his neck. The bandage David had applied was stained with dried blood, and the red had colored the cloth around his entire neck. Allar poked at it for a few moments, wincing in pain. He shrugged and looked out the windows to the flaming trees, then back to David.
He asked, “What happened?”
“An undead creature attacked. It bit you, had some snakes attack me, then ran when I tried to set it on fire. Are you alright?”
Allar shook his head. “I must’ve been dreaming. I couldn’t wake up. I just kept watching all these terrible things, and that sword was always there.”
David considered the sword, and asked, “Do you remember seeing the man with the scimitar attacking a dark Elf woman?”
Allar’s eyes widened. “Yes. How did you know that?”
“After the thing bit you, I poured some of the water from the font onto the wound. I thought the bite might have been diseased, but if I understood the monster right, it actually kept it from turning you into one too.”
“Thanks,” Allar said dryly.
Outside, one of the trees cracked, and there was the sound of a large branch falling to the ground. David jumped in surprise, then sighed and shook his head.
“Jumpy,” Allar said. “I can imagine why you would be. Are we trapped here?”
David nodded, nervously watching the doors, windows, and the tops of the walls. He had magically lifted the remains of his fire talisman into the branches of the nearest tree outside, and smashed the flask of oil to speed the burning. The creature had seemed very afraid of fire, and the church was entirely surrounded by flames, but there was very little underbrush to burn on the ground, and David was afraid of letting his guard down.
“What I saw in the spell was strange,” David said. “And you’d groan during some of the more unpleasant moments. Maybe it mingled the water with your blood, but I can’t be sure.”
Allar sighed in relief. “Good. I was worried that I had dreamed that on my own. Pretty nightmarish, actually, what with him and his mother.”
“Which one was his mother?” David asked.
“What do you mean?” Allar asked, and then he said, “Oh. I forgot we couldn’t hear anything from the spell. In the vision it was just . . . very vivid. I was there, and I could hear, and feel, and smell everything. The brown-skinned man – the one with the scimitar – his mother was the dark Elf woman he ended up . . . killing.”
Allar started to say something else, then shook his head. “Blech. Here, give me the sword.”
David handed it over and asked, “Anything else?”
“Well, I woke up just a little after that point, but it looked like the spell wasn’t done with.”
David pointed to the toppled and cracked font. “I knocked it over, and the holy water burned the creature. It must have ended the spell.”
Allar shrugged. “Well, I certainly don’t mind. If you’d heard what was really going on, it was much more frightening. Are you sure what the spell showed was what really happened?”
David nodded absently, lost in thought. “Allar, do you know anything about the sword? Anything important?”
Allar shook his head quickly. “You wouldn’t want to know. It’s not anything important.”
“Allar.”
“No.” He shook his head again, then coughed lightly as a billow of smoke passed over them. “Trust me. It’s not . . . dangerous. Look, you were already saying you were uncertain about whether you want to be out and treasure hunting. If ghouls and dragons and that undead thing that attacked me were worrying you, this is just something you don’t want to hear.”
David stood up and crossed his arms. “I’m tired of you being so evasive, Allar. It took you over a year to finally admit what you did back in Tundanesti, and you won’t tell me what happened with the Trillith. And now this sword. I want to help you, Allar, but you won’t tell me anything..”
Allar sheathed the scimitar and sighed. “I know you do, but you’re wrong. I’m fine. I’m not the same confused kid I was when you found me in Tundanesti. I can handle myself now, honestly. I made one horrible mistake, and I made a worse mistake of trying to ignore it. It might seem like I nearly did the same thing again with the girl, Tri’ni, but . . . David, it was the monster thing. I was being controlled. I was a little disturbed at the time, and I was afraid I was the one doing it, but I’m fine now. I know it was just, you know, just the creature, controlling me.
“You don’t have to take care of me. Except of course when I get attacked by monsters. Then the help is appreciated.”
“You’re not being straight with me,” David said. “While I’m happy that you’re not glaring at Tri’ni whenever she says anything, I don’t know why you had the sudden change of heart. Even if you’re telling the truth about the Trillith, you still haven’t answered my question. What actually happened down in the cave?”
“Alright-” Allar started to say, but there was a loud hiss from the darkest corner of the church, and both of them fell silent.
It had come from twenty feet away in the area that still had a ceiling, below the steeple. There were no windows, no light from the fire. David held up the light talisman, and as light came forth, the pale flesh of a serpent twice as long as a man appeared amid the dark stones of the church floor. Its head turned to face them, and its skin began to slough off, peeling away, revealing arms and a torso beneath.
“Sh*t,” Allar said, drawing the scimitar. “Is that it?”
Allar tried to stand but sagged, and David grabbed his his hand. “Stop. I didn’t get a chance to mention this, but you see, we can’t hurt it.”
The creature’s body was free from the snake form, and it was tearing the flesh off its face to reveal its Elven visage. Allar stood up, hesitated, then said, “Alright. Explain.”
“It drank our blood. We can’t harm it. I tried. Several times. Normal fire scares it away, but my spells are pretty useless.”
Allar’s shoulders slumped and he looked down at David. “See, that’s the sort of thing you should have told me right away. This is why you shouldn’t be adventuring.”
The creature was beginning to stand.
Allar gestured toward it with his scimitar. “How’d that thing get in here, anyway? It’s a stupid inferno outside. Did it walk through the wall or something?”
David backed away from the undead creature, toward the smoldering remains of the tree that had fallen into the church. “Who cares? Let’s go.”
Allar sighed with frustration and started to back away with David. The creature hissed in their general direction again, and Allar readied his sword, his grip weak. The creature didn’t approach, and in fact turned its head as if searching the room. Its eyes, once glowing, were faint and dim.
“It can’t see us,” Allar whispered.
David stopped, knowing he was missing some clue, but unsure what. The creature sniffed the air, looking confused, and David understood. He lightly held the dog’s head charm around his neck and prayed it would keep working, hiding their scent.
The creature spoke, its tone casual. “Where are you hiding, friends? Burning down more of the forest, perhaps? My ancestors used to live here, you know. Lived here, died here, were chained to trees here and left to rot. Who’s the fire waking up, I wonder.”
It hissed again, then sneered. “Magic, trickery. I should have expected as much from a Jispin.”
David and Allar exchanged glances and shrugged. David tapped his nose and gave Allar a questioning stare. Allar’s reply was only a confusion expression, and David waved him off.
He tucked the light talisman away inside his robes and reached for his movement talisman. The small box rattled slightly, filled with broken bits of clay beads. He directed energy into it, though he could feel his control weak and unsteady from exhaustion. The broken pieces of the stone font lifted into the air and began to hover toward where the undead creature was crouched. Concentrating closely, he lifted the stones just a bit higher and positioned them directly over the undead, then released the spell.
The font should have struck the creature and snapped bones, but the blood-drinker leapt forward as the stones crashed where it had been. It hissed and smiled, then charged for David, reaching out with its claws. Allar stepped into its path and slashed the scimitar, but whether his strike was simply too weak from blood loss, or the creature was truly invincible to him, the sword glanced off the monster’s Elvish face.
“You’re supposed to be blind!” David shouted in dismay.
He leapt to the side, trying to dodge, but the creature grabbed him by his shirt and forced him to the ground. It pressed its weight upon him and leaned low. Into his ear it whispered, “I’m still an Elf, fool.”
“It can see magic!” David cried to Allar, just before the creature raked its fingers across his chin, cutting the flesh.
“Drop the sword!” David shouted. “Just run.”
The creature opened its mouth to rip out David’s throat, but Allar dashed in and slashed the scimitar down across the creature’s back. The strike caused no injury, but it surprised the creature. The blood-drinker stood up, holding David at arm’s length in one hand. Allar swung again at the creature’s face, dragging the diamond-edged blade across cheek and jaw, again with no effect.
The blood-drinker started to reach for Allar, then glanced down at the sword. It blinked its golden eyes in awe. “The royal blade of Tundanesti. But you are half-human!”
Allar backed away, and David hung in the creature’s grasp. It relaxed its grip as if to drop David, then shook its head.
“No. In my life, I would have killed you for that theft, but I lost that life thirty years ago. Keep your treasure, for what little life remains to you.”
It grabbed David in both hands and lifted him to its mouth. Its fangs sank into David’s neck, and he screamed in pain, clenching the movement talisman so tightly his palm bled. High overhead, stones cracked, debris fell, and firelight gleamed off of a polished metal spire. Engrossed in feeding off of David, the monster did not look up, did not hear the steeple as it was magically torn from the place it had held for three thousand years.
The thirty-foot long shaft of metal smashed through what remained of the roof, hurtled downward, and drove into the undead blood-drinker’s body, impaling it in the center of its back and piercing outward from its belly. The creature spasmed and pulled back, its fangs tearing free from David. The Jispin fell to the church floor, right beside where the massive spire had pierced the ground and cracked stone.
The mortally-wounded undying creature began to scream, flailing, trying to pull itself free. Allar came up next to David and helped him stand, and the two backed away from the agonized wails of the blood-drinker. Its own blackened blood oozed down the tip of the spire.
“Holy sh*t!” came a shout from Babb, at the entrance to the church.
David looked back and saw Lacy, Babb, and Tri’ni standing in the church doorway, covered in soot and coughing. David waved to them weakly, and nearly fell to the ground, but an equally-weak Allar managed to hold him up.
“Are there any more?” Lacy called as she ran over to them. She was holding a sharpened wooden stake, two-feet long, as were the other two.
David shook his head, and they all gathered together ten feet from the wailing undead.
“We saw your signal,” Tri’ni said, trying to smile but failing because of the screams. Trying to sound casual, she said, “This must be a nocheb lud. It can’t get out, can it?”
Babb smiled and patted his stake with care. “Time to kill the monster.”
Tri’ni nodded weakly. “It is a monster, right?”
Allar looked to the creature and sighed. “No. No monster. It talks. It’s just a poor cursed man, whose suffering should end.”
Babb shrugged. “Whatever you say.”
He walked over beside the creature, and looked down to the giant metal spire. He laughed. “A metal stake? Old man Valheur told us, you have to use wood on these things. And it’s supposed to go in the heart, not the spleen.”
Babb thrust the wooden stake into the creature’s chest, then pounded it with a mailed fist. Bone cracked, and the creature’s screams stopped.
Babb shook his head. “Honestly, you were doing it all wrong.”
Embers began to crackle up from the creature’s skin, and flesh melted away into ash and fire. In the span of a few breaths, it was gone. The metal spire creaked and folded to the ground.
Lacy took a long breath, then asked, “Are you two alright?”
“We’ll live,” David said. “Or at least I hope so. It might be safest if we could get some holy water on my wound. Unfortunately, I think I broke our font.”
Babb shrugged. “There’s a church back in town. If you’d checked before you’d left, you could’ve saved yourself a trip, and you might not have a hole in your neck.”
David smirked, then stepped away and kneeled. Allar patted him on the shoulder and walked back to the others.
Allar said, “Give him a moment to pray. We were blessed to have made it out of this alive.”
David almost spoke up, but he held his tongue and tried to be as discreet as possible as he scooped a few bits of ash from the nocheb lud into a glass vial, for use in making a talisman later. Then he held up a hand, and let Tri’ni help him to his feet.
Allar was talking with Babb and Lacy, and Tri’ni leaned over to quietly ask David, “Did you find what you came here for?”
David shook his head. “Allar knows something about the sword, but he won’t tell me everything.”
Tri’ni grinned. “Not that. What you really came here for.”
David looked at her, confused. “Do you mean God?”
Tri’ni hummed happily with surprise. Then she chuckled and shook her head. “Nevermind.”
She stood up and helped David walk over to the rest of the group. Loud enough for all the group to hear, she asked, “Aside from the monster, was it a good trip?”
Allar laughed, then wheezed. “I was telling Lacy and Babb here that I missed most of it. I just had one long, bad dream.”
Babb stuck a thumb out toward the church door, and the fire beyond it. “I’m not going back out there until that stops, so let’s just get comfortable, and David can tell us what happened.”
Everyone turned to David. David started to explain, then sagged to the ground and passed out.
Two days later, on the road, David was at the back of the group when he saw Allar slowing down, letting the others pass. When he and his old friend were walking stride in stride, David looked up expectantly. “Something on your mind?”
“A lot, actually,” Allar said. “Tri’ni’s been asking Lacy and me to tell her all the names of all the monsters we know, in case she has to warn us of something. She also keeps asking me to tell her again how you managed to stab the nocheb lud. Don’t be surprised if she asks you for magic lessons.”
“That’s not all you wanted to talk about,” David said.
Allar smiled. “No, but I don’t like telling you everything that’s on my mind.”
They walked for a few moments without saying anything, watching the wheat fields on both sides of the road sway. Ahead of them, Babb was telling Tri’ni a story, swinging his sheathed bastard sword as a prop.
“Look,” Allar said. “I was about to tell you in the church. The thing, the . . . Trillith. It was talking to me, making me remember things, trying to make me want to take revenge. At first, yes, it really did convince me that I still wanted revenge on the Taranesti. I forgot when it was, and started thinking like I was eighteen again.”
David saw the guilt on Allar’s face, and said, “I’m sorry. I just wanted you to admit it, for your own sake. You remember how my mother always said you can’t heal if you don’t admit that you’re hurt? I just thought-”
“David,” Allar interrupted, “there’s more.”
David waited. He saw Allar’s eyes move to look ahead at Tri’ni, and Allar took a deep breath, steadying himself.
“I always told you that the reason I took so long to let you know about me killing the dark Elf in Tundanesti was because I was too ashamed. I said I had been terrified of what I’d done. Even I convinced myself of that. But, the thing is, the Trillith was making me relive all these memories, pulling up everything I’d even had to do with Taranesti. And it showed me what I did to that man. And it made me remember that I enjoyed it, and that I was happy and proud of what I’d done.”
David felt bile in his throat. “Allar, are you serious. You, you actually. . . ?”
“Of course I could never tell you.” Allar’s expression was pained. “I couldn’t even let myself remember. And I know it has to sicken you to hear me say it, but that’s what really happened. You told me you wanted the truth, and you’re my friend. I owed it to you to be honest.”
David laughed weakly. “I guess I can’t say I didn’t ask for it. I still don’t understand you, but I imagine I couldn’t unless something like that happened to me.”
Allar was nervous as he asked, “Can you still accept me as a friend?”
David scoffed. “The Lord forgives, and my standards of decency aren’t as high as His. I think I can manage to get along with you somehow. Though, to be honest, I still want you to give up adventuring. I guess that won’t happen, though.”
“We’ll see,” Allar said.
There was a slow pause, and then David whistled. “Wow. That was a pretty big surprise. And you’re telling me the secret of the sword is worse?”
“Oh, the sword?” Allar shook his head. “No. Nothing as bad as that. The sword just devours souls.”
Allar smiled to David, patted a hand on the sheath that held the black scimitar, then quickened his pace to the front of the group. For the second time in a short while, David cursed outwardly.
The church murmured with blistering winds, and the forest outside rustled and crackled, its leaves and branches ablaze. David sat next to his unconscious companion in a cold shadow cast by the old stone walls, but embers floated around him on the winds, glowing. Despite the forest’s seeming lush life in the day, by twilight the trees had been eager to catch fire. Now the entire church was surrounded with flames.
David waited, clutching the black scimitar and his dormant light talisman together. Around his neck he wore another of his talismans, a piece of wood that a friend from home had carved to resemble a dog’s head. It concealed the scent of blood, but it couldn’t keep out the ash and smoke.
Allar coughed and groaned. David wheeled to look at his friend, and opened his mouth to talk, but Allar’s eyes were already open, and he was staring at David intently. David waited for him to talk, then waited a bit longer as Allar looked around with his eyes, staying motionless on the ground.
Finally, Allar said, “I pass out in a church, and you somehow get us both sent to hell. Good job.”
David glared at him.
Allar slowly sat up, then touched his neck. The bandage David had applied was stained with dried blood, and the red had colored the cloth around his entire neck. Allar poked at it for a few moments, wincing in pain. He shrugged and looked out the windows to the flaming trees, then back to David.
He asked, “What happened?”
“An undead creature attacked. It bit you, had some snakes attack me, then ran when I tried to set it on fire. Are you alright?”
Allar shook his head. “I must’ve been dreaming. I couldn’t wake up. I just kept watching all these terrible things, and that sword was always there.”
David considered the sword, and asked, “Do you remember seeing the man with the scimitar attacking a dark Elf woman?”
Allar’s eyes widened. “Yes. How did you know that?”
“After the thing bit you, I poured some of the water from the font onto the wound. I thought the bite might have been diseased, but if I understood the monster right, it actually kept it from turning you into one too.”
“Thanks,” Allar said dryly.
Outside, one of the trees cracked, and there was the sound of a large branch falling to the ground. David jumped in surprise, then sighed and shook his head.
“Jumpy,” Allar said. “I can imagine why you would be. Are we trapped here?”
David nodded, nervously watching the doors, windows, and the tops of the walls. He had magically lifted the remains of his fire talisman into the branches of the nearest tree outside, and smashed the flask of oil to speed the burning. The creature had seemed very afraid of fire, and the church was entirely surrounded by flames, but there was very little underbrush to burn on the ground, and David was afraid of letting his guard down.
“What I saw in the spell was strange,” David said. “And you’d groan during some of the more unpleasant moments. Maybe it mingled the water with your blood, but I can’t be sure.”
Allar sighed in relief. “Good. I was worried that I had dreamed that on my own. Pretty nightmarish, actually, what with him and his mother.”
“Which one was his mother?” David asked.
“What do you mean?” Allar asked, and then he said, “Oh. I forgot we couldn’t hear anything from the spell. In the vision it was just . . . very vivid. I was there, and I could hear, and feel, and smell everything. The brown-skinned man – the one with the scimitar – his mother was the dark Elf woman he ended up . . . killing.”
Allar started to say something else, then shook his head. “Blech. Here, give me the sword.”
David handed it over and asked, “Anything else?”
“Well, I woke up just a little after that point, but it looked like the spell wasn’t done with.”
David pointed to the toppled and cracked font. “I knocked it over, and the holy water burned the creature. It must have ended the spell.”
Allar shrugged. “Well, I certainly don’t mind. If you’d heard what was really going on, it was much more frightening. Are you sure what the spell showed was what really happened?”
David nodded absently, lost in thought. “Allar, do you know anything about the sword? Anything important?”
Allar shook his head quickly. “You wouldn’t want to know. It’s not anything important.”
“Allar.”
“No.” He shook his head again, then coughed lightly as a billow of smoke passed over them. “Trust me. It’s not . . . dangerous. Look, you were already saying you were uncertain about whether you want to be out and treasure hunting. If ghouls and dragons and that undead thing that attacked me were worrying you, this is just something you don’t want to hear.”
David stood up and crossed his arms. “I’m tired of you being so evasive, Allar. It took you over a year to finally admit what you did back in Tundanesti, and you won’t tell me what happened with the Trillith. And now this sword. I want to help you, Allar, but you won’t tell me anything..”
Allar sheathed the scimitar and sighed. “I know you do, but you’re wrong. I’m fine. I’m not the same confused kid I was when you found me in Tundanesti. I can handle myself now, honestly. I made one horrible mistake, and I made a worse mistake of trying to ignore it. It might seem like I nearly did the same thing again with the girl, Tri’ni, but . . . David, it was the monster thing. I was being controlled. I was a little disturbed at the time, and I was afraid I was the one doing it, but I’m fine now. I know it was just, you know, just the creature, controlling me.
“You don’t have to take care of me. Except of course when I get attacked by monsters. Then the help is appreciated.”
“You’re not being straight with me,” David said. “While I’m happy that you’re not glaring at Tri’ni whenever she says anything, I don’t know why you had the sudden change of heart. Even if you’re telling the truth about the Trillith, you still haven’t answered my question. What actually happened down in the cave?”
“Alright-” Allar started to say, but there was a loud hiss from the darkest corner of the church, and both of them fell silent.
It had come from twenty feet away in the area that still had a ceiling, below the steeple. There were no windows, no light from the fire. David held up the light talisman, and as light came forth, the pale flesh of a serpent twice as long as a man appeared amid the dark stones of the church floor. Its head turned to face them, and its skin began to slough off, peeling away, revealing arms and a torso beneath.
“Sh*t,” Allar said, drawing the scimitar. “Is that it?”
Allar tried to stand but sagged, and David grabbed his his hand. “Stop. I didn’t get a chance to mention this, but you see, we can’t hurt it.”
The creature’s body was free from the snake form, and it was tearing the flesh off its face to reveal its Elven visage. Allar stood up, hesitated, then said, “Alright. Explain.”
“It drank our blood. We can’t harm it. I tried. Several times. Normal fire scares it away, but my spells are pretty useless.”
Allar’s shoulders slumped and he looked down at David. “See, that’s the sort of thing you should have told me right away. This is why you shouldn’t be adventuring.”
The creature was beginning to stand.
Allar gestured toward it with his scimitar. “How’d that thing get in here, anyway? It’s a stupid inferno outside. Did it walk through the wall or something?”
David backed away from the undead creature, toward the smoldering remains of the tree that had fallen into the church. “Who cares? Let’s go.”
Allar sighed with frustration and started to back away with David. The creature hissed in their general direction again, and Allar readied his sword, his grip weak. The creature didn’t approach, and in fact turned its head as if searching the room. Its eyes, once glowing, were faint and dim.
“It can’t see us,” Allar whispered.
David stopped, knowing he was missing some clue, but unsure what. The creature sniffed the air, looking confused, and David understood. He lightly held the dog’s head charm around his neck and prayed it would keep working, hiding their scent.
The creature spoke, its tone casual. “Where are you hiding, friends? Burning down more of the forest, perhaps? My ancestors used to live here, you know. Lived here, died here, were chained to trees here and left to rot. Who’s the fire waking up, I wonder.”
It hissed again, then sneered. “Magic, trickery. I should have expected as much from a Jispin.”
David and Allar exchanged glances and shrugged. David tapped his nose and gave Allar a questioning stare. Allar’s reply was only a confusion expression, and David waved him off.
He tucked the light talisman away inside his robes and reached for his movement talisman. The small box rattled slightly, filled with broken bits of clay beads. He directed energy into it, though he could feel his control weak and unsteady from exhaustion. The broken pieces of the stone font lifted into the air and began to hover toward where the undead creature was crouched. Concentrating closely, he lifted the stones just a bit higher and positioned them directly over the undead, then released the spell.
The font should have struck the creature and snapped bones, but the blood-drinker leapt forward as the stones crashed where it had been. It hissed and smiled, then charged for David, reaching out with its claws. Allar stepped into its path and slashed the scimitar, but whether his strike was simply too weak from blood loss, or the creature was truly invincible to him, the sword glanced off the monster’s Elvish face.
“You’re supposed to be blind!” David shouted in dismay.
He leapt to the side, trying to dodge, but the creature grabbed him by his shirt and forced him to the ground. It pressed its weight upon him and leaned low. Into his ear it whispered, “I’m still an Elf, fool.”
“It can see magic!” David cried to Allar, just before the creature raked its fingers across his chin, cutting the flesh.
“Drop the sword!” David shouted. “Just run.”
The creature opened its mouth to rip out David’s throat, but Allar dashed in and slashed the scimitar down across the creature’s back. The strike caused no injury, but it surprised the creature. The blood-drinker stood up, holding David at arm’s length in one hand. Allar swung again at the creature’s face, dragging the diamond-edged blade across cheek and jaw, again with no effect.
The blood-drinker started to reach for Allar, then glanced down at the sword. It blinked its golden eyes in awe. “The royal blade of Tundanesti. But you are half-human!”
Allar backed away, and David hung in the creature’s grasp. It relaxed its grip as if to drop David, then shook its head.
“No. In my life, I would have killed you for that theft, but I lost that life thirty years ago. Keep your treasure, for what little life remains to you.”
It grabbed David in both hands and lifted him to its mouth. Its fangs sank into David’s neck, and he screamed in pain, clenching the movement talisman so tightly his palm bled. High overhead, stones cracked, debris fell, and firelight gleamed off of a polished metal spire. Engrossed in feeding off of David, the monster did not look up, did not hear the steeple as it was magically torn from the place it had held for three thousand years.
The thirty-foot long shaft of metal smashed through what remained of the roof, hurtled downward, and drove into the undead blood-drinker’s body, impaling it in the center of its back and piercing outward from its belly. The creature spasmed and pulled back, its fangs tearing free from David. The Jispin fell to the church floor, right beside where the massive spire had pierced the ground and cracked stone.
The mortally-wounded undying creature began to scream, flailing, trying to pull itself free. Allar came up next to David and helped him stand, and the two backed away from the agonized wails of the blood-drinker. Its own blackened blood oozed down the tip of the spire.
“Holy sh*t!” came a shout from Babb, at the entrance to the church.
David looked back and saw Lacy, Babb, and Tri’ni standing in the church doorway, covered in soot and coughing. David waved to them weakly, and nearly fell to the ground, but an equally-weak Allar managed to hold him up.
“Are there any more?” Lacy called as she ran over to them. She was holding a sharpened wooden stake, two-feet long, as were the other two.
David shook his head, and they all gathered together ten feet from the wailing undead.
“We saw your signal,” Tri’ni said, trying to smile but failing because of the screams. Trying to sound casual, she said, “This must be a nocheb lud. It can’t get out, can it?”
Babb smiled and patted his stake with care. “Time to kill the monster.”
Tri’ni nodded weakly. “It is a monster, right?”
Allar looked to the creature and sighed. “No. No monster. It talks. It’s just a poor cursed man, whose suffering should end.”
Babb shrugged. “Whatever you say.”
He walked over beside the creature, and looked down to the giant metal spire. He laughed. “A metal stake? Old man Valheur told us, you have to use wood on these things. And it’s supposed to go in the heart, not the spleen.”
Babb thrust the wooden stake into the creature’s chest, then pounded it with a mailed fist. Bone cracked, and the creature’s screams stopped.
Babb shook his head. “Honestly, you were doing it all wrong.”
Embers began to crackle up from the creature’s skin, and flesh melted away into ash and fire. In the span of a few breaths, it was gone. The metal spire creaked and folded to the ground.
Lacy took a long breath, then asked, “Are you two alright?”
“We’ll live,” David said. “Or at least I hope so. It might be safest if we could get some holy water on my wound. Unfortunately, I think I broke our font.”
Babb shrugged. “There’s a church back in town. If you’d checked before you’d left, you could’ve saved yourself a trip, and you might not have a hole in your neck.”
David smirked, then stepped away and kneeled. Allar patted him on the shoulder and walked back to the others.
Allar said, “Give him a moment to pray. We were blessed to have made it out of this alive.”
David almost spoke up, but he held his tongue and tried to be as discreet as possible as he scooped a few bits of ash from the nocheb lud into a glass vial, for use in making a talisman later. Then he held up a hand, and let Tri’ni help him to his feet.
Allar was talking with Babb and Lacy, and Tri’ni leaned over to quietly ask David, “Did you find what you came here for?”
David shook his head. “Allar knows something about the sword, but he won’t tell me everything.”
Tri’ni grinned. “Not that. What you really came here for.”
David looked at her, confused. “Do you mean God?”
Tri’ni hummed happily with surprise. Then she chuckled and shook her head. “Nevermind.”
She stood up and helped David walk over to the rest of the group. Loud enough for all the group to hear, she asked, “Aside from the monster, was it a good trip?”
Allar laughed, then wheezed. “I was telling Lacy and Babb here that I missed most of it. I just had one long, bad dream.”
Babb stuck a thumb out toward the church door, and the fire beyond it. “I’m not going back out there until that stops, so let’s just get comfortable, and David can tell us what happened.”
Everyone turned to David. David started to explain, then sagged to the ground and passed out.
* * *
Two days later, on the road, David was at the back of the group when he saw Allar slowing down, letting the others pass. When he and his old friend were walking stride in stride, David looked up expectantly. “Something on your mind?”
“A lot, actually,” Allar said. “Tri’ni’s been asking Lacy and me to tell her all the names of all the monsters we know, in case she has to warn us of something. She also keeps asking me to tell her again how you managed to stab the nocheb lud. Don’t be surprised if she asks you for magic lessons.”
“That’s not all you wanted to talk about,” David said.
Allar smiled. “No, but I don’t like telling you everything that’s on my mind.”
They walked for a few moments without saying anything, watching the wheat fields on both sides of the road sway. Ahead of them, Babb was telling Tri’ni a story, swinging his sheathed bastard sword as a prop.
“Look,” Allar said. “I was about to tell you in the church. The thing, the . . . Trillith. It was talking to me, making me remember things, trying to make me want to take revenge. At first, yes, it really did convince me that I still wanted revenge on the Taranesti. I forgot when it was, and started thinking like I was eighteen again.”
David saw the guilt on Allar’s face, and said, “I’m sorry. I just wanted you to admit it, for your own sake. You remember how my mother always said you can’t heal if you don’t admit that you’re hurt? I just thought-”
“David,” Allar interrupted, “there’s more.”
David waited. He saw Allar’s eyes move to look ahead at Tri’ni, and Allar took a deep breath, steadying himself.
“I always told you that the reason I took so long to let you know about me killing the dark Elf in Tundanesti was because I was too ashamed. I said I had been terrified of what I’d done. Even I convinced myself of that. But, the thing is, the Trillith was making me relive all these memories, pulling up everything I’d even had to do with Taranesti. And it showed me what I did to that man. And it made me remember that I enjoyed it, and that I was happy and proud of what I’d done.”
David felt bile in his throat. “Allar, are you serious. You, you actually. . . ?”
“Of course I could never tell you.” Allar’s expression was pained. “I couldn’t even let myself remember. And I know it has to sicken you to hear me say it, but that’s what really happened. You told me you wanted the truth, and you’re my friend. I owed it to you to be honest.”
David laughed weakly. “I guess I can’t say I didn’t ask for it. I still don’t understand you, but I imagine I couldn’t unless something like that happened to me.”
Allar was nervous as he asked, “Can you still accept me as a friend?”
David scoffed. “The Lord forgives, and my standards of decency aren’t as high as His. I think I can manage to get along with you somehow. Though, to be honest, I still want you to give up adventuring. I guess that won’t happen, though.”
“We’ll see,” Allar said.
There was a slow pause, and then David whistled. “Wow. That was a pretty big surprise. And you’re telling me the secret of the sword is worse?”
“Oh, the sword?” Allar shook his head. “No. Nothing as bad as that. The sword just devours souls.”
Allar smiled to David, patted a hand on the sheath that held the black scimitar, then quickened his pace to the front of the group. For the second time in a short while, David cursed outwardly.
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