AuthorLeftright
patreon
Chapter 30: Sacrifice
🕑 Added 2023-01-12 02:28:35 +0000 UTCAt the high priest’s words, the red double gates glinted in the backdrop. Despite being held stationary by a monstrous hand of irredeemable magic, Dan found his attention shift beyond his imprisonment. The mural along the doors called to him, sung to him, depicted events that made his blood boil.
The skeletons embedded on the doors through long tarnished bronze chains, turned to look at Dan. Their dead stares caught against the morphing stone walls, refracting tightly into the human’s chest and mind. Their dilapidated sundered expressions tore through the situation as their pleas for mercy took hold.
Was it arrogance? Or was it eternal suffering? Which aspect allowed the doors’ decoration to prescribe such pain? Why did they get to ask for freedom while Dan had to fight? Why did they lock up the one thing the high priest wanted, the one thing that would end his pious crusade?
Dan decided he hated the gate in that moment.
Like squeezing a sponge, Dan felt something let go inside his constricted body. He groaned in pain, ushering his mind to rethink his attention. The hand of darkness shook him, sending loud pops up and down his spine. He met his captor’s sight.
The high priest bore holes with his hollow eyes, every facet of the man focused on a single human. A fifth arm had sprouted from the man’s back, wrapping down and around the cavern while hiding in the shadows. It tapered in size as the snake-like appendage went, ending in a massive hand that had caught just the right prey.
“Open the gate,” the high priest commanded again, his normal voice gone and replaced with a legion of various pitches.
One yelled, one whispered, one talked backwards, one fast, one slow, one spoke like it breathed helium, another like it sang bass in a choir made entirely of convicted toads.
With a weight crushing his lungs, Dan couldn’t speak. He couldn’t move at all, he couldn’t think. His mind kept switching back to the red double doors, to his personal hell, to the skeletons that pleaded for a proper death.
Then, he was flying. He was weightless, cold, and in pain, but flying. He was free, for a mere moment, he was free. The prosperous feeling ended in a sudden sharp thud. The feeling was familiar, like déjà vu. It wasn’t until Dan sucked in a full breath that his body caught up.
Across the cavern, the high priest yelled indiscriminate orders, each less formulated than the last. One, however, caught Dan’s ear, piercing his shattered mind. Like a fog had been lifted, his eyes refocused, his body rallied.
First thing was first, he needed to be able to speak. A broken spine, crushed lungs, organs that looked like that had been passed through a narrow tube. He was dying, but he couldn’t help but smile. Tortuous day after torturous day, putrid experiment after putrid experiment. Dan remembered it all, he remembered the feeling of dying over and over again.
He had put himself back together hundreds of times over, he knew his body very well at this point. His current deathly injuries were dire, yes, but simple. Blunt force trauma, nothing magical, nothing viral. A simple fix, with magic of course.
The light Dan produced was unbounded by the high priest’s means, and turned the cave the same color as a sunrise on a golden morning. The pain disappeared from his body like a waft of smoke dissipating against an arena of fresh air. He was shaky when he got to his feet, but a rush of adrenaline quickly reoriented him.
Dan’s display of magic did little for the mistrusted cultists. None seemed to pay him any attention, even the high priest who was still splurging orders in his demonic voice.
“Please help me…”
Dan spun at the voice, finding his moment of freedom had only put him one step closer to his chaining nightmare. He had been thrown, like the ragdoll of a temperamental child, into the red double doors that he was so very destined to open.
“Please…” the voice pleaded again.
Scanning the gate, Dan found the source. A skeletal amalgamation of multiple bodies, arms, torsos, heads, and lives. It was chained within a dark metal cage, multiple body parts sticking through the tight gaps. The depiction of an open fire swirled below the prison, burning the victims alive again… and… again…
“How can I?” Dan let slip, the words acting on their own accord.
The skeleton didn’t respond in action or fact, nor did it plead for death. It muttered with winded breaths before returning to inanimate state and solidifying into haunted decoration.
Frowning, Dan returned his attention to the high priest after hearing a repeat of an order. Going unseen, he reclaimed Golden Robe’s wooden staff, finding it unmolested in a shadowy corner. Then, with a single well-calculated thought, a spike of light ripped through the cavern towards the distracted leader.
Even though it was expected, that the man caught the magical attack with a shield of black sunk Dan’s heavy heart.
“Your second is dead,” he spoke. “Your family member who wears gold is dead.”
The statement sent a silent wash across the chamber, only the song of madness reigned. The cultists’ fur coats of madness had mutated just like the very theater in which they stood. The hairs and worms had made progress in most, entering their bodies as more and more resisted their weakened states.
The declaration of a fallen comrade and family member sent a few over the edge. They charged the human who brought such news, forgoing their magical attunement for raw rage. Each died after only a few steps, the high priest’s snaking arm the cause. All that was left was misted shrouds of red and crumbled fleshy bags of bone.
“Open the gate,” the high priest commanded yet again, his eyes emotionless.
No remorse, no guilt, Dan thought, finding anger within himself.
“Did he really mean that little to you?”
“Open the gate,” The cave shuddered at the command, knocking loose built up pockets of mucus.
The cavern drained inward, the saliva seeping across the floor like a deep cleaned kitchen. The viscous liquid fell from the colosseum-like levels, creating a waterfall of slick glowing hunger. As a wave of mucus crashed against the high priest’s foot, a twitch echoed across his face.
That was all it took to break the madness induced spell. The high priest reacted like a master mage, hardening his mind shield. While new tendrils found it impossible to continue their onslaught, the man’s body was already littered with cancer.
“Open the gate,” he repeated again.
Dan saw the change and readied his posture. With slightly bent knees, he flooded his core in the stolen staff he held. The gem bloomed to life, echoing his magic through the colorless crystal. A spell formed in his mind’s eye as his blood began to harden.
The high priest, however, stopped him cold. With a hand held up, the man spoke, “Open the gate and you will be free.”
The light within the gem dimmed. “Don’t know how,” Dan said.
“You’ve done it before.”
“Doesn’t mean I know how.”
The high priest ground his teeth. “Then it will be your blood that creates the catalyst.”
With his primary core unbound, confidence filled Dan’s mind and fueled his words. “It won’t work. We both know that. We both know who the true sacrifice is.”
“A Void prophet is wrong more than it is right.”
Dan smiled. “Are you sure you want to risk it?”
The question struck a chord within the sea of mucus, resending the high priest’s smile into existence. “Yes, I do.”
A single drop of black ink fell from the man’s hand before launching forward like a rocket. It sizzled as it flew, leaving a curtain of darkness in its wake. With the attack, the madness within the cavern ignited into life. The thickest horde left their fleshy hosts, barreling towards the man who wanted to touch god.
A wall of ire sprouted from the high priest’s mind, blocking the invisible hairs and splitting the mass. The tendrils ignored the failed latching, refocusing their attempt on the shield itself. They poured onto one spot, cracking the man’s mental fortitude. His smile twitched as Dan reacted to the spell.
The drop of black screamed as it moved, just like Dan’s instincts. He threw himself to the ground while pulling at the magic within himself. Envisioning a suit of gold, his relatively frail body collected winged motes of light before amplifying.
The sudden pop of light locked the cave into a moment of white void. The far off cultists, the ones not frozen in fear, reacted with their own magic. Some brought in protective aspects, others summoned small familiars, or fired off haphazard attacks. With their eyes blind, the attacks spewed through the cave at random.
Accept for a few who had marked the high priest’s location.
With their life expectancy halted to a bare crawl, the cultists sought to rectify their punitive lives. The family had dissolved with one prophecy and one crazed father, there was nothing left for them.
Magical attacks of all kinds drilled into the stationary high priest, each stopping cold against the man’s shield. With a weak flick of the wrist, the offending cultist sent spiraling to the ground after a void counter attack.
The air within the cavern turned dark as muted winds fell from the ceiling or came in from cracks on the floor. The walls expanded out, stretching the room’s size to nearly double the original. The battle went into a standstill as most regained their footing. The high priest, however, looked to the muscly stone that had formed.
“He’s here!” the leader shouted, his arms out wide. “This is it! This is him! Behold, my fellow children of god, we are together!”
Falling to his knees, the high priest scooped up a mixture of blood and mucus. He slurped the dreadful drink with earnest vigor, his pleated robes becoming wet and heavy in the process. As he continued to drink, the walls pushed inward, resetting the room’s size and then some. Those around the periphery were pushed a few steps to the center.
Then the air disappeared. Dan gasped at the sudden loss of oxygen, breathing through his nose and mouth much like the very walls he stood within. Something shifted within the human, pulling his attention from the man who sung praise and drank his god’s essence. It had been some time since Dan felt his core guild him in unknown magic.
Blood: Intensify came to his mind along with a visual example. The memory played from long ago, back on the rig, back with Lambert and Bob. The blood beast controlling Lambert was kicked off the steel walkway to one far below. Even back then Dan wondered about how the monster was able to stand, the fall was surely deadly for normal people.
With his lungs weak and clutching at stray wind, Dan let his blood core run loose. Like starting a car, his body regained motor function and his thought process increased several folds over. His heart beat like a jackhammer, each pump pushing richly oxygenated blood through his body.
The explosion reverb of a void bomb caught Dan’s attention and brought the high priest front and center. The man had stopped drinking from their pound of spit and instead clutched at his throat like the remainder of the cult.
Dan’s eyes widened with greed and his core blazed with penance. The spell came quick and clean, forming at the tip of his staff before taking flight like the bird it resembled. Freedom collided with the high priest, killing his smile and shattering his faltering shield.
Gold bore into the man, slicing through his robes all allowing his disfigured chest time in the spotlight. The sparrow ate through a portion of his skin before being warded off freshly sprouted purple shade. It grew and stretched, wrapping the high priest in a suit of ethereal armor.
The walls screamed in pain.
Burnt leather wafted through the cavern’s airless structure, the source smoking from under the high priest’s feet. Despite his lack of air, the man jumped with a troubled screech, banishing his purple spell from existence and falling into prayer.
Forgoing his words of forgiveness, the madness dug into the devout, entering his crestfallen body once again. The high priest’s eyes went hollow, his mind shield fully being rendered fiction. His words of worship stopped, along with the threat of spells.
Air flowed from the ceiling and through the cracks on the floor a moment later, while the walls extended out.
With a frozen target, Dan’s flew straight and true. Blood sprayed from the high priest as motes of gold cut through his body. The next attacks came and went, each flaying skin and painting the fleshy walls red.
The high priest, however, didn’t fall. He absorbed every attack, every ounce of pain, every stark cold thought, and every mania inspired action. The man had become the father of his family through centuries of trial and error. He had prayed every day since finding his god, he had cultivated an operating mine, he had discussed horrible things with dastardly beings.
His muscles cramped over, his whole body turning into a dried prune. Blood pooled just below his skin, his heart stopped beating. He forced his lips to move through the hysteria, a lifetime of failure compounding into a single vision of death.
He saw it, golden light being his true death, not the kind he had been through before. He couldn’t move, he couldn’t think, he had to die, right? He was prophesied to die, to open the gate, to bring forth his god. Why? Why him? He didn’t want to die, not without achieving his goals, not without achieving his goals. Not without achieving his goals. Not without achieving his goals.
Dan’s extended right arm, the one holding Golden Robe’s staff, hesitated along with his primary core. A presence told him to stop, to prepare. He had heard it before, but he didn’t want to believe it. Why stop? The high priest was surely going to fall-
“Prepare, Dan!” Sully’s unmistakable voice called, “My hold will not keep!”
“Sully?”
Blood gushed from Dan’s nose and leaked from his eyes when he faced his elderly friend. His hearing went wet, his mouth coated in metal. He stumbled, dizziness squeezing his mind and sight. Like a wrung out cloth, blood forced its way out through the path of least resistance. His skin turned crimson as each pore became a miniature volcano.
“Stop!” Dan yelled, pleading with himself as much as his dead friend. From within, the imagery came, the spell formed. His blood hardened and scabbed, creating hundreds of patches of stone-like scales.
Sully gave a faltered smile, his ghostly form hidden beneath a skin of madness and delirium. Before phasing through reality, disappearing back to whatever hellish home he originated, Sully spoke a last warning, “He is coming, prepare.”
Dan watched as his friend faded, the blood geysers across his body retreating back to their owner’s hand.
Controlling blood outside his body was a painful and cold affair, but when he saw the high priest’s condensed form, Dan shuddered. Taking Sully’s warning, he sounded the alarm within his mind. Wall after wall, pane after pane, gold took form through many mediums, racing his enemy’s attack.
The explosion came first, sending the cavern into a frenzy. Dan’s blood soaked ears burst from the sound, his feet slid from the shockwave. Only a few layers of shielding broke, but he knew the true terror was yet to come.
The walls of the room crushed inward, removing the air from Dan’s lungs-
At the center of the cavern, hiding just before the marble podium, the high priest’s spell detonated for the second time. It feared none, returning existence for all it consumed to pure darkness. The pop of air rushing to a vacuum smothered the fleshy cavern, sheering through the muscle and sinew until it reached stone.
The layered arena-like antechamber was cast from reality and sent to another. In its place was a perfect carved sphere of stone, surrounded by a system of caves that slowly began transitioning to flesh. The corruption of life plowed through the stone, finding purchase within the new sacrificial room.
Dan fell with the lack of land, sliding down the perfectly sliced sphere. His body bled, his organs were ruined, but he lived. The remainder of his light core fixed his wounds, giving him a much needed moment of reprieve.
The double red gate leading deeper into the cave system remained strong, its massive size unfazed from the suicide attack. No dents, no scratches, it stood tall and strong, hovering-
Dan cursed with sluggish annoyance. His body ached and pleaded for rest, but he had to look, he just had to. The gate hung in the air, the stone behind it cut smooth. There was no tunnel leading deeper, no cave hub, no other fleshy rooms.
The skeletons along the gate’s red frame reanimated, each groaning in pain or pleading for mercy. Their torturous restraints took heed, recreating their damnation for a live audience of one.
“I guess the prophet was wrong,” Dan whispered to himself, turning towards the exit.
The skeletons stopped, each freezing under unseen chains. Mistakenly, Dan looked back. The gate’s otherworldly size scraped against its wooden trim, announcing its opening with a dreadful screech.
At the same time, a puff of black air was born anew within the center of the room.
The gate opened with a rush, a stone tunnel directly behind its threshold. The new cave system flared to life, instantly turning to moist flesh and tight muscles. It breathed in like a free diver preparing to dive, sucking everything loose from within the sacrifice room.
Rock, mucus, blood, the bisected body or two, all flew through the air towards the gate. Dan steadied himself on his staff, locking his feet to the ground with a bend of light. A rush of cold air barreled into him before falling to the gate’s domain.
He turned, finding the source to be a pure black ball. A hand shot through the boundary, pulling at the black orb. A second han pierced their veil a moment later, tearing the blackness into a doorway.
With a hesitant step, the high priest stepped through the portal, his body pristine and mind shield prepared. With a glorious smile, he yelled to Dan, “The gate is open! We must step through! He awaits!”
Dan moved to draw upon his golden weapon, finding his reserves spitting. He cursed, yelling back, “You gave me my freedom if I opened the gate!”
The high priest considered this for a moment while walking closer. At some point the pull of the gate picked his feet up from the stone and ushered to the threshold. A web of black stopped his freefall, catching him just before the red trim. He took a moment to balance himself, sheer will the only limiting factor.
“You must be my guide! I forgive your transgressions! You are obviously favored! Come, we will explore eternity together!” The high priest held out his tired hand, a smile unlike any other across his lips.
Stalling for as long as possible, Dan thought through his options. Nothing was as appealing as freedom, something he desperately needed. An elderly man stood off to the side, unaffected by the gate’s pull. He stood there in prime condition, no evidence of madness or corruption.
He smiled gently, nodding to Dan. Speaking directly into his mind, Sully said, Trust me.
They locked eyes for what felt like hours, and Dan eventually came up with an answer.
“Fine!” he shouted, the answer coming easily.
Dan let the golden bands holding his feet in place go while fueling his blood with plenty of oxygen. His body took to the pull and for the second time this day, he was weightless.
Reaching for the high priest’s outstretched hand, Dan let the remainder of his blood core free along with a cry of victory.
The high priest’s hand suddenly twitched to the side, knocking his balanced stance. His eyes widened as he fell, the doors consuming him like a void. Black strands shot out, each clawing into any and everything and trying to slow their master’s momentum but it was too late.
The high priest collided against the mucus filled throat, disappearing around the bend.
The vacuum died in that moment, accepting its one new resident. The gates began closing, giving Dan enough of an angle to catch himself on one of the red wooden doors. Gravity retook his body, sending him to the stone floor directly below.
While the fall broke a few bones, Dan didn’t mind. He had won, he thought, it was time to rest. Laying still, he looked to where he last saw Sully, and fell asleep.
