Paul Kemp - Shadow witness

The sudden understanding brought him to reach into his pocket and pull out the felt mask. Its touch brought him comfort. He realized now that espousing a faith did not mean surrendering himself; it meant the possibility of bettering himself. In a flash of inspiration, he realized that his lifelong derision of religion had its true origin not in his fear of losing himself but in his own self-hatred. He had pretended to despise religion because he had deemed himself unworthy of it. But his own standards had been too high, Mask had called him, and Mask knew Gale's flaws.

He thought of Jak and Ansril Ammhaddan, both of them priests, and both of them flawed men, but both good men, too. For the first time in his life, Gale realized that the one did not exclude the other-he could be both flawed and good. With that, he took the final step toward faith.

I accept, godsdammit, he thought to Mask. He only wished he had done so sooner. He had become Mask's Champion only to die at Yrsillar's hands. The irony almost drew a smile.

Still, he'd be damned if he'd die without a fight. He jumped to his feet.

Yrsillar's laughter immediately ceased. "You are going nowhere!"

Gale didn't dare turn around. He ran back toward the double doors as fast as his weakened legs would carry him.

From the corner of his eye, Jak saw Gale sprinting toward him. His protective spell was gone! He trailed the mist of his soul behind him like smoke from a flickering candle.

With Jak momentarily distracted, the shadow demon raised a claw.

Jak staggered backward out of reach. Gale shouted to b?Ti as he closed.

"I'm coming, little man!"‹

The shadow demon turned its head toward Gale.

Seeing his opportunity, Jak charged, arms wide in an embrace. Too late, the demon tried to bound backward. Jak crashed into it and wrapped hisJWtefi^s around its leathery midsection in a great hug. Brilliant golden light flared blindingly bright. As the protective aura dissipated, its energy "Epicxle*iat0 the shadow demon. The stink of charred demon flesh filled Jak's nostrils. The creature screamed, spasmed, and tried to pull away, but Jak held on. Absently, he noted the feel of the creature's skin, cold and flabby, like a wineskin filled with ke water. A claw tore painfully across his back. He screamed but held on. Another daw gripped him around the head, lifted him into the air, and flung him away like a rag doll.

He grunted, hitting the ground awkwardly. Jak looked up to see the demon standing over him, its abdomen and torso horribly burned and smoking.

Gale appeared behind it, long sword overhead. He chopped across and neatly swiped the demon's head off Milky-white eyes widened with surprise, and the shadow demon soundlessly collapsed. Thick purple liquid trickled from its neck.

"Gale!"

"Little man." Gale extended a hand and helped him to his feet "We're leaving."

"Good," Jak said. When he gripped Gale's forearm, he saw their souls bleeding from both of them. Hie gray mist rose from their skin and floated back toward the altar where Yrsillar still stood, eating. Jak felt weakened already, but whether from the drain or the bleeding wound in his back, he couldn't tell.

"You cannot escape me," Yrsillar boomed, but remained on the dais.

Gale steered Jak for the door. "Let's move."

Behind them, Yrsillar began to mouth the words to a spell.

"Dark! I didn't know they could cast spells, Gale. I swear I didn't."

Theyran.

Jak glanced behind them to see that a distortion had formed in the air before Yrsillar. In a voice as loud as thunder, the demon lord spat the final magical syllables of the spell and pointed a clawed hand at Gale and Jak. At once the distortion spread out and took on the shape of a wave, a tide of pure nothingness. Pulsing with power, it undulated toward them like a great worm. Picking up speed, it swallowed pews, floors, and ceilings, and left only blanknessin its wake. Yrsillar and the dais sat amidst an ocean of absolute emptiness.

Jak found the emptiness hypnotic, the oblivion tempting.

"You're going nowhere!" the demon lord boomed again.

"Run!" Gale ordered, looking over his shoulder and pulling Jak along. "Run!"

Jak ran. Trailing wisps of soul in their wake, they ran down the rest of the aisle as quick as they could, crashed through the doors, and sped down the hallway for the gate that led back home.

Right behind them and gaining, the wave burst through the door, wall, and floor. It consumed everything in its path. They reached the gate. Gale lifted Jak to throw him through.

^o," Jak said. "We go together or not at all."

The wave sped toward them. Gale didn't argue. He nodded, picked Jak up, and slung him over his back. "Hang on."

The wave closed in, swallowing everything. Looking into its emptiness, Jak felt dizzy. He closed his eyes and clutched Gale around the neck.

"Go!" he screamed. "Go!"

Gale backed up a few steps, spun on his heel, and sprinted forward. The wall of nothingness seemed about to engulf the colors of the gate; to swallow them in emptiness.:c

"Gale!" Jak was face to face with the void. Bile raced up his throat. They wouldn't make it!

Gale took a final stride and leaped into the air.

Jak's final shout resounded in his mind but Gale could make no reply. He felt his body stretched as thin as parchment and a tingling that quickly grew painful, as though tiny needles had been driven into his pores. There was light and color.

"Oomph!"

"Dllarlk!"

They toppled from the gate and collapsed to the floor in a heap. They quickly disentangled themselves from one another and tried to recover their bearings.

Above them, a pulsing void of emptiness swirled in the air-the other side of the gate that they had just traveled through. With each pulse, it pulled the hairs upright on Gale's arms and head, like a tide trying to pull him back to sea. The pull of the void.

He took a deep breath, inhaled the acrid and coppery air of the real guildhouse. He sat up and looked around.

Corpse after bloody corpse Uttered the hall, over twenty of them, all gutted and decapitated. They were the ghouls he and Jak had slaughtered in their vaporous forms back in the Abyss.

Jak stared at the slaughter. "Dark," he said in wonder.

Looking upon the carnage, Cale felt no horror, just a distant, grim satisfaction. The ghouls were twisted evil creatures-irredeemable horrors-and he and Jak had done what they had to.

He surveyed the rest of the guildhouse, the real guildhouse-wood plank floors, piles of broken furnishings, heaps of filth. The whole was lit by the familiar flickering of torches. They had made it back alive.

He was surprised to find his strength returning, the energy of home apparently replacing that sapped by the Abyss. With the return of feeling came a heightening of pain-his ribs ached sharply and the gash in his torso throbbed with every beat of his heart.

The pain of being alive, he supposed. The pain of the human condition. He welcomed the sensation. Better that than the oblivion of the void.

Revivified, if not quite whole, he looked at Jak with raised eyebrows.

"Jak?"

The little man nodded. "I feel it too. It's replacing the life we lost to the Abyss." After a thoughtful pause, he added, "But it can't replace the life-force consumed by Yrsillar."

Yrsillar. He'd be coming as soon as he realized that his spell had not killed them. Cale climbed to his feet, one hand holding his blade, one hand holding the felt mask.

"Let's do this," he said, and helped Jak to his feet. "Hell be coming."

Jak nodded, pulled out his holy symbol. "First some heating. We're both wounded."

Without waitingfora reply, he chanted the words to a spell and laid a magically charged hand on Gale's arm. Gale's bruised ribs instantly stopped aching and the gash in his torso closed. Jak cast another on himself, sealed the slash in his back and the scratches about his face and head.