Oathbreaker: A Dark Fantasy Web Serial

Arc 6: Chapter 18: Reanimation

The forest burned.

I’d lost count of how many times I’d walked through it while locked within haunted dreams. But the bloody creeks and murmuring ambience of my many victims were gone now, replaced by the crackle of a spreading wildfire.

The heads remained, but they’d changed. They were charred and warped, some reduced nearly to bare skulls. Many looked bigger than they’d been, bloated like cancerous fruit, white fire spilling out of their mouths and eyes. Even the shadows seemed to burn, writhing like worms rather than being chased away by the unnatural light.

What had I done?

What you had to.

I’d become the very monster I’d sworn to fight. Yith spoke the truth. This was profane, and the sacred flame I’d been entrusted with, it was…

The dead were not gone or destroyed. The fire seemed to invigorate them, and most were lost in some strange euphoria, mumbling and gibbering to themselves while they basked in its haunting radiance. Unlike previous times, my red cloak wasn’t soaked with dripping blood. Instead, its ends burnt away into colorless flame, and creeping hands extended out to me from the bramble-carpeted ground, grasping longingly at my ankles. The distant woods were lost in a pale, blinding glow.

There had to have been another way.

Many, but that is what it is to live.

To be awake.

That voice… Yith?

No, he was gone. What little I’d left of his spirit would be hurtling through the Wend, drawn inexorably towards the Abyss. Or, more precisely, the iron gaols the Zosite had fashioned over it. Even if those failed to catch him, it would be centuries before he regained the strength to crawl back out, if not millennia.

He is gone.

This enemy, at least, is beaten.

I searched the burning forest. “Who are you?”

No reply. Could it be…

“Back before the tournament, there was something in the tower besides Yith that night. Was that you?”

I’d suspected it to be one of the ghosts who followed me, perhaps a more benevolent one. It had drawn my attention to Lias’s journal, the wizard’s attempt to help me protect myself with knowledge. But how would one of the ghosts know what the journal contained? How would they know the exact piece of it that would give me the answer I sought, the way to beat the Vykes and Yith?

There was only one spirit in my wake who knew that collected history well enough.

“I have no more patience for games, Dei. That’s you, isn’t it?”

Even as I said the words, I doubted my guess. Shyora was in Hell, I knew that. The visions I’d seen of her since my imprisonment beneath Rose Malin were just the result of a spell, little different from a malicious, semi-sentient hate letter. Was this that shadow?

Why would it help me? It didn’t add up, especially after endless weeks of being tormented in my sleep by that same entity.

Then who had helped me that night?

I could remember the scene still. The demon’s presence lingering in the room like a bad smell, Catrin’s last words ringing in my ears, a sense of hopelessness chased away by the beginnings of a plan.

And just like that, the forest was gone. I stood in my tower office and it was empty and clean again, calmer waves rolling over the isle below. The moons turned over the night sky, and my hand brushed the page beneath me.

On it was an image. A sketch showing a beautiful woman, nude, long limbed and silk haired. Her fair features were marred by two leathery, hook-clawed wings, a pair of small horns, and a spindly tail segmented and barbed like a scorpion’s. She held a pose and expression like a saint in prayer, eyes closed and fingers clasped, wings folded around her.

Almost like an angel, until you looked closer.

The page included a copy of the diagram a long dead alchemist had used to bind her. The sketch was how she’d appeared to that foolish summoner, his lustful rendition.

I’d noted how he got her hair and build right, but not her face. Her lips hadn’t been that full.

The page next to it was an account of the interview between the summoner and Tormentsister. They’d spoken at length, and the man took detailed notes. I could almost hear Fidei’s dulcet voice echoing through my mind as I read the transcription of her words.

So you were there? When Heaven burned?

If you want to give it that name.

What was it like? What did you see?

The man recorded how Shyora had laughed.

It would take far longer than this circle will hold me to describe all I’ve seen, mortal. I would counsel you to narrow your question.

Answer me, demon. Is it real? The First Kingdom? Is Onsolem—

She’d interrupted.

You hold all the power of creation and destruction in this very laboratory. You can turn water to wine, wood to gold, even reach forth through the fabric of existence and drag me here, and you doubt the existence of God?

There are many beings we might call gods. I want to know the truth. The origin.

Poor, tired old man. Do you fear your death? If you ask, I will take you in my arms and we will sink together into that great darkness. I will hold you close and show you horrors and wonders.

You really think I’ll just give you my soul?

I’ll take better care of it than the one you seek.

The interview went on for some time. It became clear the alchemist himself wasn’t recording it, but an apprentice. The encounter was interrupted, not by some attempt on the succubus’s part to escape, but by intruders.

Scorchknights. They’d tried to subdue the demon, but it escaped. They’d taken the alchemist instead, and made the apprentice record his fate. Summoning an abgrüdai broke Orkaelin law, and gave them the right to claim the man’s soul. They’d branded him, flayed him alive, and left his corpse chained in his own study.

The apprentice’s manic account detailed how his master remained alive for hours.

This passage was what gave me the idea to seek Ostanes and gain his cooperation. While they’d failed to capture their target, it told me the agents of Hell must have some way to bind a stray demon. It seemed far more sure a plan than waiting for an opportunity to smite Yith, something I’d failed to accomplish. He was too canny, and rarely showed his true form for long.

But it all failed. I’d failed. Hyperia was dead, several of my people were probably dead.

Was I dead?

Do you want to be?

I still had people to take care of.

Is that all you live for?

I’d endured all these years without that. There was my duty. My penance.

What do you repent for?

“Who are you?” I asked the darkness. The sound of the Forest of Heads burning remained in the background, distant but close enough in this dream space.

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Pain.

“I don’t understand.”

Pain is weakness leaving the body.

Most cannot endure it.

They discard it.

Grow callouses.

…But not you.

You cling to yours like a talisman.

“You’re my pain?”

No answer.

“Did you show me how to use the shades as fuel?” Had this presence been putting ideas into my thoughts as I slept? I’d never considered doing it, until that moment where I’d needed more strength.

If the malcathe had not let you touch the roads of the dead, you would not have known it was possible.

Had you not become apostate and drawn the dead to you through these years, it would not be possible.

Had you not been willing to become the vessel for their rancor, they would not have hurled themselves into the fire.

No single being is responsible for everything.

All choices intersect.

“That didn’t answer my question.”

Then you should have asked a better one.

Frustrated, I lapsed into silence as I searched for words. The sound of the burning forest was becoming louder.

“Why did you help me?” I asked.

Because you needed it.

“And what’s that to you? Who are you?”

You cannot feel it?

I pressed my hands to either side of the open journal, feeling tired. Fire was beginning to form along the edges of the walls, but I felt strangely unconcerned. My eyes fell again to the page, and the image there. I lifted a hand to feel at the scars over my left eye. My jaw tightened.

“You’re not her.”

No.

But you already guessed that.

My hand drifted over the page. After a moment’s hesitation, I turned it. A different old sketch lay beneath me then, this one of a shadowy silhouette drawn all in scratchy lines with eyes the color of pale bone. It had horns, and wings, but few other distinguishing features.

“You’re an abyssal ghost. A…” I searched for the right word, drudged up from Lias’s lessons and my own scattered research. “A scadudemon.”

I’ve protected you.

Without me, the dead would have driven you insane after the loss of your elven ring.

They still might.

You’ve made them stronger.

Though, they have given you strength in turn.

“You’ve been torturing me with my own memories,” I said. “Don’t expect me to think you’re an ally. If you wanted me to believe that, you wouldn’t have taken her face.”

I turned to face the room. White fire creeped close, some reaching lines of it nearly at my feet. I focused on the presence I sensed beyond the blaze.

“What do you want?”

I am want.

“I thought you were pain?”

No answer again. I grit my teeth at this continued back and forth. “I’m tired of games. That’s all everything is to your kind, isn’t it? Twisted distractions that leave death and tragedy in your wake. I’m sick of it.”

Then stop fighting.

Stop hurting.

Just die.

“Is that what this is all about?” I asked. “Making me give up?”

Believe as you will.

I am tired of games too.

And it’s time to wake up.

“Alken, I swear to every god and devil, if you die I will—”

I reached out and caught someone by the wrist. There was a gasp, a curse, the sound of a floorboard creaking as a foot shifted.

“Is he…”

“No, he’s not undead. At least, I don’t think so.”

That last voice… soft, slightly sad.

“Lisette?” My voice emerged as a dull, half-audible croak even to my own ears.

“Yes.” She sounded relieved, and very tired.

I tried to rise, but a firm hand pushed me back down. “Don’t move.” That was Emma. “You’re still badly hurt. Lisette’s got her threads in you, but you’re barely in one piece. Why in all hells didn’t you see a healer as soon as you left the Coloss?”

They’d taken my armor and arming clothes off, leaving me mostly naked. They’d cut my trousers up past the left knee, and removed my shirt as well. My left leg was covered in dry blood, though some effort had been taken to clean it and they’d wrapped it liberally in bandages. I could feel a warmth beneath that material. Lisette’s Art.

They’d removed the bolt in my shoulder too, and the cleric’s auratic threads were in my jaw, my ear, and half a dozen other places I’d not even realized I was injured. Everything hurt, but not as bad as I felt it should have.

“I couldn’t do anything about your broken ribs,” Lisette said apologetically. My chest was horribly bruised. “I haven’t mastered the trick of sewing injuries I can’t see or touch, and without cutting your chest open and getting to the bone directly…”

“Let’s maybe avoid surgery for now,” I rasped. “How long was I out?”

“A couple hours,” Emma said.

They’d boarded up the window again, but I could hear the storm rolling overhead. It sounded quieter. Two hours… anything could have happened in the rest of the fortress in that time.

“Help me up.”

“That’s really not—”

I hardened my voice. “Do it.”

With obvious reluctance, the two women got me into a sitting position. I nearly passed out again, but managed to keep from embarrassing myself and inspected the room. It looked like a small war zone. Hyperia remained chained to her chair, the only part of the warding circle still intact. The princess’s eyes were open, glassily staring at nothing. Her throat, chin, and chest were a mess of half-dry blood. It formed a sticky pool around the chair.

I turned my eyes away from that gruesome sight. Penric lay on the floor still, his brains opened up by the blow he’d taken to his skull. Beatriz sat against the wall by the door to my bedchamber, which I noted was ajar. The guardswoman sat in a fetal position, her eyes dull and listless. Alive, but not all there.

“Mallet’s dead,” Emma informed me. “Penric got him with a knife. Major artery, nothing we could do.”

“Not Penric,” Lisette corrected softly.

Emma considered a moment, then nodded.

I took a deep, painful breath and started to speak. Emma knew what I wanted to ask and answered before I voiced the question. “Over there.” She nodded to the corner by the window.

I turned, and saw Catrin. She lay on her side with her back to me. “Is she…”

“Alive,” Emma informed me. “Well, as much as she ever is. I gave her a bit of blood. She’s stable we think, but hasn’t been speaking.”

Lisette threw Emma a reproachful look. “I told you that was a bad idea. You’d already lost too much.”

Emma rolled her eyes. “Calm down, choir girl. It was hardly a sip and it helps her rest. Besides, my blood is quite spicy. A little goes a long way, and if she goes berserk again, then…”

She shrugged, then made an explosive gesture by unfolding her fingers. That was a disturbing thought. Could she really use her powers that way?

“Don’t hurt her anymore,” I croaked, having meant to make it a growl.

Emma watched me a moment, then nodded. “I don’t want to. It’s just a precaution.”

“Let me talk to her.”

Neither seemed to want to comply, but something in my face must have convinced them. I got a leg under me, grimaced, then stood. When I managed it with little help, it took us all by surprise.

Lisette frowned. “You should not be able to do that.”

I wasn’t healed. My injuries were definitely still there, shouting for my attention, but they felt strangely numb. When I tested my left leg, it elicited a wince but not a shout or a bad fall. My right shoulder felt stiff, but not exactly like there was a hole in it.

On a hunch, I closed my eyes and looked inward. Tentatively, like one touching an infected wound, I tested my own aura.

And was shocked to find it burning hot. It felt stronger than it had in a long time, filling my limbs with warmth and my blood with strength. One of my hands clenched into a fist and I lifted it. Most of my more recent burn scars, which my armor wouldn’t protect me from at all given they came from my own magic, looked faded. There was new, pink skin growing.

What had done it? Lisette’s threads were clean aura, freely given, and I suspected my own spirit was absorbing that energy. But it couldn’t be all that. I’d slain Yith. That, I believed, did act as the culmination of a long-carried oath, something I’d been burning to do since Caelfall a year past. Had that act reinvigorated the aureflame?

Then there was what I’d done with the shades. I’d used them as kindling. Part of me expected that blasphemy to send the holy fire into a consumptive fury, spurring it to burn me until I became a living torch driven insane by the pain. That’s how the other Table knights had gone, back in Seydis after the Archon died.

I hadn’t really taken the time to think it through, but I’d felt that fate in the back of my mind even as I’d acted. I’d accepted the possibility, if it meant defeating the demon and saving a few lives. I hadn’t expected that act of necromancy to do this.

Rather than relief, I felt a subtle sense of unease at my unexpected recovery.

No time to grapple with it. My eyes went to Catrin. Waving off the other two, I approached her with cautious steps and knelt just out of arm’s reach.

“Cat?” I asked softly. “Can you hear me?”

She was still a moment. So still she seemed just a corpse. Then I heard a rustle, and her left hand curled over her right arm. She wouldn’t look at me. A tightness formed in my throat.

I felt a hand on my shoulder. Emma spoke with an uncharacteristic gentleness. “She’s just experienced something terrible. Several days of it. We should give her some time.”

I didn’t say what I thought — that I just wanted to know she was alright. I knew she wasn’t alright, and might never be again. Demons leave lasting wounds.

I cupped her face in my hand and leaned down to kiss her hair. Her chin was still covered in Hyperia’s blood, and she still looked like a three day old corpse, but her eyes no longer held that manic glint of possession. Yith was gone. He could no longer exert his influence over her from the depths I’d sent him to.

Her eyes closed and her lips pressed tight. “Alken,” she breathed. “Please forgive me.”

“There’s nothing to forgive. None of this is your fault. Rest now. We’ll talk later.”

She curled into a ball, retreating back into herself. I stood and walked back to the edge of the circle.

“Well,” Emma said at my side. “This is a right mess. Do you think Vander had better luck?”

I met her eyes, finding Lisette’s staring curiously back at me too. Amber and blue, both waiting for my leadership even after all this.

“Has there been any word from the rest of the fortress?”

“All quiet,” Emma noted. “But we’re isolated out here, so that’s not unusual.”

“Vander should have sent a messenger by now.” If not him, then Markham or Rosanna would have called for me. I had a bad feeling.

“Hyperia was never going to cooperate,” I told them. “She acted like she’d given up, but when Yith arrived she tried to betray us. She would have sabotaged negotiations somehow, I know it.”

Lisette frowned. “How can you be sure?”

“She told us about her home, remember? There are more demons in the Vyke castle. She was willing to give Yith over to Ostanes because he wasn’t her only tool. I see that now.” I shook my head, feeling tired. “It’s all a mess. I thought I had this under control, but…”

“We’re with you,” Emma said. “What’s the plan?”

Before I could answer, the creak of straining wood and rattle of chains drew our attention. We all turned, and stared at Hyperia’s corpse.

It was moving. Glassy eyes stared forward, and the exposed vessels in her shredded throat did not pump fresh blood, but the warlock’s head was turning to one side. Blue lips moved, but only a raspy whisper emerged, and a sickening gurgle.

Lisette’s eyes widened. “God in Heaven, she can’t still be alive!?”

The cleric started forward, her fingers already moving as she began weaving aura into shape, but I grabbed her shoulder to stop her.

“She’s not alive,” I said darkly. “Not exactly. We should have anticipated this.”

Emma understood what I meant. “The barrier! It trapped her ghost at the moment of her death.”

“That,” I agreed, “and a lifetime of exposing herself to occult rituals and profane powers. Her soul is heavy with sin. No surprise it clung tight.”

Hyperia Vyke was reanimating as a dyghoul.

And I was starting to conjure another plan.