Brian Pratt - Shades of the past

An idea forms quickly and James removes a slug from his belt and throws it with the force of magic behind it. The slug flies through the air and impacts with the side of the brazier directly over the creature. When the slug hits, the side of the brazier cracks open and the oil contained within pours out upon the creature. As the oil flows from the opening, James tweaks the flame burning atop with magic to ignite the oil.

When the burning oil lands on the creature, it bursts into flames. A scream that is felt rather than heard rips through their minds like a red hot knife. It thrashes about for a minute before it finally lies still and the scream stops.

Another flash of light from the remaining creature and the medallion flares into blinding brilliance as it again absorbs the attack.

With one taken out of action, James can now concentrate on the other. The creature approaching still has Jiron’s knife sticking out of its ribs. Removing another slug, he sends it flying toward the creature. The creature makes no attempt to avoid it and the slug rips through its stomach and exits out the back.

Not even slowing, it continues to approach. Suddenly, the flames burning over the remaining braziers roar to life. A ball of flame shoots out of each toward the dais. Meeting in the air, the balls explode as they collide. When James’ eyes recover from the brilliant explosion, he sees one of the hell hounds standing upon the dais.

Behind him, he hears Jiron get to his feet. A brief glance back shows him that Jiron has his remaining knife in hand and is preparing to sell his life dearly. Tuning back, he throws a confining barrier around the hell hound while at the same time lashing out with another wave of force to push the cowled figure backward.

“Jiron, get me out of here if I fall,” he says.

“Do the best I can,” he replies. Though how effective he will be with a numb arm and a chest that’s throbbing horrendously with pain, he’s not sure.

The hell hound fights the barrier. James has to funnel more of his reserves to simply maintain the barrier while he deals with the undead creature before him. Behind the approaching creature, the oil continues to spill forth from the broken brazier, creating an ever widening area of flame.

Lashing out again with a blast of force, he knocks the creature backward into the pool of flame. The fire instantly ignites the creature’s robes. Their heads are again hit by the mind tearing scream as the fire consumes the creature, which almost causes the barrier surrounding the hell hound to fail. Falling over into the pool of fire, the creature thrashes around for a moment before lying still.

When the scream tearing through his brain stops, James is again able to focus his attention back to the hell hound and the barrier encasing it. As he’s done several times before, he turns the barrier cold and begins to shrink it in upon the creature.

Struggle as it will, the barrier continues to shrink until the creature’s struggles cease and all resistance to the closing of the barrier vanishes. With a pop, the barrier implodes completely.

James sags and almost falls to the floor before Jiron catches him with one hand. On the verge of passing out he says, “Help me up. We have to get out of here.”

As he helps James to his feet, he glances over at what’s left of the two bodies burning in the pool of fire on the floor. “What were those things?” he asks.

“I don’t know,” he replies. The memory of the warrior priest that he slammed with his magic before they came here is very much on his mind. Why he hasn’t made an appearance yet baffles him. “You remember the way out?”

“Yeah,” replies Jiron. “Let’s go.” He puts James’ arm around his shoulder for support before moving toward the double doors they had passed through during their previous visit. Kicking one of the doors open, he and James pass through to the corridor on the other side. James’ orb springs to life as they leave the light of the braziers behind them.

Turning down to the right, they walk quickly. Coming to the end they arrive at another corridor that runs perpendicular to theirs. Without hesitation they turn and follow it to the right. They soon come to the winding flight of stairs leading down.

On their previous visit, they had come up this way after crawling through a drainage pipe found in the side of the mountain. At the time they were being pursued by soldiers of the Empire and were just looking for a place to hide.

“Not that way,” says James as they come to the stairs. “Better leave the same way as last time.”

Jiron nods at that and continues down the corridor. They pass by another corridor extending into darkness on their right and shortly after that arrive at a small room. Standing in the room are two pedestals, upon each sits a statue of a demonic creature. They give them but a cursory glance as they pass through the room to the corridor on the right. Hurrying along, they pass three more corridors branching off to the right before entering the room at the end. So far there has been no telltale indication that the warrior priest has appeared on the dais.

Just as they remembered, they find the stairway leading to the room above them. The only exit from the room is an opening in the right wall where a corridor begins. At the top, James pauses and says, “Let’s rest a moment.”

“You sure?” asks Jiron. “There could be more coming.”

“I know, but I need to.” James leans against the wall by the stairwell and sags to the floor. “Just for a minute or two,” he tells him.

Seeing just how tired his friend is, Jiron nods and takes position at the top of the stairs to keep an eye out for anyone approaching from below. He’s not doing too great either. His chest throbs from where that dead creature blasted him, not to mention the multiple strikes of those small flying creatures that burn him like acid. Nothing would please him more right now than to lie down and fall asleep.

He turns his attention from the stairs to James and says, “You know, those dead creatures really weren’t that hard to defeat.”

“I know,” James replies. “I don’t know if you noticed, but a warrior priest appeared on the dais before we left.”

“I saw something but didn’t realize it was a warrior priest,” he admits. Getting a confused look on his face he asks, “Then why didn’t he come after us?”

“I don’t know.” Shrugging, James leans his head against the wall and adds, “I suppose we shouldn’t question our good fortune.”

Grinning, Jiron returns his attention to the stairs. “I suppose not,” he agrees. He absentmindedly rubs the arm that fell numb when the creature touched it.

“Arm okay?” James asks.

“The feeling is beginning to come back,” he says. “What would cause something like that to happen?”

Shrugging, James contemplates what happened a second before answering. “One of the theories that were kicked around back home was that the energy needed to keep a dead body ‘alive’ would have a detrimental effect on the living,” he explains. “When it touched you, the energy suffusing it entered your body and ‘shorted out’ your nervous system.”

“Shorted out?” he asks perplexed.

James gives him a grin. “Sorry, it’s a term from my world. It simply means it stopped your arm from communicating with your brain. If the contact had lasted for any length of time, the damage probably would have been permanent if it didn’t kill you outright.” He indicates the arm that’s numb and adds, “Since the feeling is coming back, it stands to reason nothing permanent was done.”

“That’s good to know,” he says.

Closing his eyes, James tries to relax a moment to quiet the headache that throbs painfully behind his eyes. His restless mind continues trying to make sense of the last few hours. First, Jiron and I are in a city buried by sand and are about to kill each other. Then we wind up in that other place where the little demonic flying creatures were trying to kill us. If the dais is some kind of magical transport device, why did we end up here? It makes no sense! It can’t be a random transporter, such a thing would be useless to the warrior priests. There has to be a way to control it.