James Davis - Circle of Skulls

"It's here," he said.

In the shadows at the base of the stairway, the shape of a figure coalesced in the dark, a black silhouette in the shadow so faint that Quessahn suspected she could have imagined it. The mere sight of it chilled her skin, and her breath came in steamy puffs as the figure half crawled up the bottom steps in nervous twitches. She stepped back as Jinn raised his sword, a spell on her lips as she brandished her ritual dagger and noticed movement to her right.

The lantern's light shrunk as a patch of shadow on the bedroom wall darkened, spreading like a mold stain and slowly taking shape. A masklike face of deepest black pressed through the wall with crude gouges for eyes and a pitlike mouth twisted in quiet suffering. A thin, emaciated arm stretched through the plaster, reaching for her as the thing's hollow eyes found her.

A shock wave of icy energy gripped her chest, and she fell back, her heart thumping painfully as the thing's torso flowed through the wall. Its ghostly face drooped, a theater mask of sorrow, as it moaned in hunger. Her hands seemed unnaturally pale as she raised them, turning her dagger in a graceful curve as the rhyme of the spell poured from her cold lips, pulling raw magic to her fingertips and shaping it into a searing light that blazed across the room.

The thing hissed in pain as the light crashed into its chest. It writhed and beat at the walls, the light spreading across its body, its flesh rippling as it pulled back into the wood and plaster.

Turning back to the stairs, she saw the dull flash of Jinn's blade as it severed the grasping fingers of another of the creatures, the wriggling digits hitting the ground like shadowy clay, dissipating in moments. He followed the slash with another, receiving little for his efforts besides voiceless hissing as the thing reached for his legs.

As Quessahn called upon another spell, the walls in the stairway rippled, wavering as more of the dark stains appeared, two then three, each slowly forming into crude, pained faces. Hungry moans escaped their toothless mouths as painful chills needled through Quessahn's flesh, her arcane rhymes growing stronger as she allowed the pain to push her, reaching into the dark places between the stars and calling forth the favors of the slumbering things that lived beyond the world's painful light.

The magic stirred through her body as Jinn's blade spun and slashed, surrounded, his gold eyes lost to her as she fought to keep them both alive for a while longer-long enough to reach him, to hold him, to let him know that in another place, in another life, she had loved him and had watched him die.

NIGHTAL 21, THE YEAR OF DEEP WATER DRIFTING (1480 DR)

Jinn kicked out, sending another of the undead creatures tumbling down the stairs as he slashed at hands grasping from the walls. Wood and plaster popped and split as the things pressed in upon him. Severed hands and shadowy limbs thumped around his boots, melting into stinking clouds of mist as they made slow progress down the stairs.

Shafts of screeching light splashed against the ceiling from Quessahn's hands, burning all that they touched and briefly illuminating simple faces set in silent screams. Her voice chanted unceasingly, deep with the harsh language of magic. The ebony hands raised against her burning light he cut away, the bodies they protected he cut down. Their flesh split like soggy, rotted wood beneath the edge of his blade. He spun at the sound of raspy moans close to his ear, his sword slicing through a stomach made of naught but ghostly hate, bleeding only a stink of death.

At the bottom of the stairway, a hand caught his left arm, black fingers digging coldly through his skin, burning his soul. Memories flashed through his mind as he struggled to free himself, stabbing the tip of his blade into the wall, causing the thing within to thrash and club at the corporeal barrier. He knew their crude faces. The hand melted away from his arm, and he reversed his stab into yet another of the things. He had seen them once before somewhere. An eager hand closed on his ankle and pulled, dropping him to one leg, off balance.

The memory lost strength as he struggled to stand, hacking at the sinewy wrist near his leg, kicking at the wide-open maw of the thing's groaning face. He fell back as the wrist gave way, his arm and leg numb from the contact as he hit the wall. A silhouette manifested in the dark, tall and thin among the scattered broadsheets near Allek's chair. The pitlike eyes caught him in a bone-chilling embrace, and the memory crawled sluggishly from the thick mire of his ancient soul, whispering a single word.

"Bodak," he gasped as the dark eyes seemed to grow, curving wide like horrible mouths and drawing him further into their depths, though he could feel his body weaken. The void he found in the bodak's gaze howled in his mind, a familiar sound that caused him to shiver as he fought to resist its pull. "This is death," he whispered and felt his pulse grow faint, thumping slower and slower in his ears as he looked into the limitless dark as if visiting an old, abandoned home. "I died there once."

The realization sent a surge of strength into his limbs, and he shoved himself from the wall, charging at the bodak and closing his eyes. He knew blindness could not protect him from the undead thing's gaze, but instinct guided his sword in the dark far better than his ill-equipped eyes. He slashed at the cold and smiled when he found resistance. He stabbed into the nearing groans, feeling their hate and letting it fuel his renewed pulse. The sword play of several millennia spun his feet and flowed through his quick hands as the undead came for him.

But for all his skill, their claws still found him, their eyes still bit at his cold flesh, and their undead bodies refused to fall until only their indomitable will had been extinguished. He imagined himself like the feeble lantern upstairs, diminished and guttering until little but dying sparks remained.

"Too many," he muttered, opening his eyes and trying to regain feeling in his hands, his footing less sure with each feint and charge.

The room shook as Quessahn thundered down the stairs, her litany of arcane rhymes unending, light dancing in waves around her as she spun with spell and dagger, cutting a path through the undead. Jinn used the light, his steel flashing like fire, trailing a misty edge of black flesh just beyond the circle of magic that Quessahn wove with horrible words. For a moment he caught sight of her blackened eyes and pale skin and felt a twinge of regret that he could not place, as if he had somehow driven her to such dark rites.

"To me!" she shouted amid the chanting, holding out her hand.

A bodak materialized between them, and he raised his blade in a powerful stroke, slicing through its torso and letting the stinking chill of its body fall apart around him as he took the eladrin's hand. Energy surged through his arm painfully as she shouted, a circle of undead forming around them, hesitantly reaching through the glow of her ritual dagger.

The circle closed, their black eyes flickering as the air rippled. Quessahn's arm shook violently, and Jinn squeezed her hand, feeling light-headed, the bodaks and the house becoming blurry and indistinct. A collective wail rose among the bodaks as their drooping faces distended further in exaggerated sorrow. Then Jinn lost sight of them all.

Reality blinked out. His gut turned. Arcane phrases slithered like smooth fingers over his body, lifting him into a tenuous, unstable space. It pressed the breath from his lungs, holding him in a brief freefall before letting him go, falling into a green-hued glow.

The night grew colder as Lucian Dregg ambled through Sea Ward, a stench of wine in each steaming breath and a particular delight in the nervous fear he caused in passersby. Maranyuss was unbothered by the cold, keeping within sight of the ward's new and seemingly unwanted rorden, her step quiet and sure as she puzzled at his importance in the seemingly random murders. She eyed the lit windows of grand mansions as she slipped by them unnoticed. Each lilting bit of laughter she heard within could be cut off, silenced forever as far as she was concerned, so long as at the end of it all, she and Jinn found Sathariel.