CHAPTER FIFTEEN
WHAT THE BLIND SEE
Mercius stared at the stain that was Mor'denaa for a very long time, his mind and body almost refusing to believe that the struggle was over. He had to force himself, eventually, to rise and return to his troops. Nephilia had collapsed beside him, and he wasn’t sure if she yet lived. Griffin, likewise, was still unconscious.
Mercius walked to his friend and peered into his dark face. He could hear Griffin breathing hoarsely, and felt his pulse strong in his neck. Gently, he shook him, and Griffin let out a groan as his eyes opened blearily.
“What happened?” he asked when he was able to sit up. Mercius told him how Nephilia had saved them both with one final blow to the demon, and had destroyed her entirely. He pointed to the oily stain on the ground, and Griffin had to laugh. “All the misery she caused, all the shit she put people through, and now the bitch is nothing but a skid mark on the ground! Ha!”
The pair of them went to Nephilia and knelt by her side. She was not breathing, but they were unsure whether or not her kind had to breathe at all. When Griffin made to pick up the prone woman, Mercius stopped him with a hand. "You are brave and valiant, my good friend, but you are as weak as a baby," Mercius said softly. Griffin only sighed and stepped aside as Mercius lifted Nephilia gently and made his way into the lake that separated them from the Hammer and the Blade.
The water of the lake was now calm and cool, as if all evil and ugliness had been bled from it with the death of its master.
The troops were formed up and waiting. Darius and Peter both mentioned to Mercius how they had just been about to wade across the lake and determine the fate of the trio, but Mercius assured them that they would have done no good, and only gotten in the way.
The entire company made their way back through the cavernous darkness that now seemed to be less black and oppressive, although none were sure whether it was imagined or simply the feel of a weight that had lifted from their shoulders. And when they reached the daylight, it seemed brighter in the compound, and, indeed, the black cloud that had hung over the place for centuries was dissipating, and the sun was feebly attempting to penetrate it.
The place was silent, all the dying finally dead and at peace--or back in Hell. Mercius, still carrying the body of his savior Nephilia, looked around the battlefield. Around four hundred of the troops had survived; they had lost roughly a quarter of their fighting force, and the corpses littered the compound. His heart sank with grief and loss as he looked at their mutilated bodies, and it must have shown in his face, for Peter placed a tender hand upon his shoulder and said:
“They died honorably, and without regret, General. They knew that this quest could only end in death, yet they were happy to take it. They fought for what they believed in, and they are the victorious.”
Darius, on his other side said, “Do not cry for these. They are but a couple hundred, and killing Mor'denaa has saved the lives of thousands. Perhaps millions.”
Mercius knew in his heart that they were right, but he knew also that the vision of the slaughtered would haunt his nights forever.
Steeling himself, Mercius gave orders to make conveyances for the dead, so that they could be brought out of this wretched place and given the funeral rights that they so honorably deserved. Darius and Peter both looked at him before carrying out his wishes, and Mercius knew what it was that they questioned.
“I don’t know if she’s dead,” he said, his gazed turned mournfully down to the lifeless figure in his arms. “But I cannot let go of her just yet. She has saved us all.” With that, he walked down the stairs and began to wander aimlessly through the slain, his thoughts darting around his head like fireflies in the night. His sides were a mass of agony from hammer blows and demon claws, but he paid the pain no mind, so lost in grief and sorrow was he. He longed for Keira's touch; to feel her hands on his face, comforting and loving. But, to Mercius' mingled dismay and relief, Keira had taken the wounded and ridden them from the compound back to where they had camped the night before. She had left the dead for Mercius to deal with.
Finally, he stopped in the center of the compound, having circled the field several times without being at all aware of doing so. He looked up and saw the tops of the looming watchtowers high above him. In one, he saw a very dim light. At first he passed it off as unimportant, but the light persisted, and, as he watched it closely it blinked with regularity and rhythm. On. Off. On. Off.
Mercius called the soldier closest to him and said, “Get me a stretcher as fast as you can. One that is comfortable and fitting for an angel. I’m going into the tower.” This last he said under his breath and to himself, but the trooper heard. Within moments, he was brought a stretcher and placed Nephilia gently upon it, arranging her hair and her limbs tenderly and with much care. He gazed deeply into her face, willing her to open her eyes, but there was no response, so he stood and looked up at the tower again.
Darius and Peter were once more by his side. They too saw the blinking light, and Darius said, “Probably a trap, General. Best to leave well enough alone.”
Mercius, without a word, started toward the tower.
The base of the thing had no door, simply a tall arch through which Mercius walked without hesitation, feeling Darius and Peter following closely behind. The interior smelled of ancient decay, but only contained a spiraling staircase that wound upward until it was lost in the black distance overhead. Mercius climbed the steps confidently and without a thought as to what he would find lurking above.
When finally he reached the top of the stairs, he paused on the landing looking into yet another doorless archway. He could hear his two marshals breathing heavily at his back. Beyond the stone arch, he could discern nothing but gloom. He glanced at his companions and drew Illuricht from the scabbard at his back. Darius and Peter, too, drew their weapons, Peter a long sword that he carried on his hip, and Darius a double-bladed axe tipped with a long spike.
Mercius entered the room cautiously, with his black blade held before him. The source of the blinking light he had seen from below was a very dim lamp hung from a chain in the only window of the tower. Its metal shade was up, and whoever had sent the signal had obviously been raising and lowering it rhythmically. Mercius peered around the semi-darkness, and basked in the scent of rot and decay which was so pervading that the pair behind him retched noisily.
There, in the corners of the small room, hidden deep within the shadows, Mercius felt something lurking, though he could not see it.
“Come forward and show yourself,” Mercius said. The thing made no move, but, eventually, gave this reply:
“Put your sword away, Arkarum.” He was reminded of the first meeting he had with the Numerai, but this voice was not strong and sweet, as theirs had been. This voice was old and dusty and feeble; a cracked dry sound of the dead and dying. “Nephilia is alive,” it continued from the shadows. “She needs you now as she has never needed anyone before.”
“Who are you, that you know so much about me and mine?” was Mercius' response.
The thing crept forward slowly, and with more dry rustlings, like a carcass being dragged across a desert. Mercius, in the dim light, could make the figure out. It was old beyond ancient. Its skin hung in folds of cracked rot. Its eyes had been sewn shut, and a yellow, puss-fluid leaked from its nose and mouth. The hair on its head was stringy and wispy, the color of mildew. It was covered from neck to toes in a black robe that was as tattered and dry as the things voice.
“I am a Watcher," it said hoarsely, as if it took all its breath to utter such a pronouncement. “I have been imprisoned here for longer than even your angel could remember. And now you have freed me of my curse, Arkarum, as was written in the stars from the beginning.”
“I have freed no one,” Mercius replied, “especially not a heinous wretch such as you.” Mercius said these words without conviction, for he had grown up ar
ound the purest evil, and could recognize it by smell alone. And this thing had no such odor about it. It smelled ancient, yes, but not evil or demonic.
It chuckled, a sound that scratched feebly at the walls of the room. “You can leave me if you wish,” it cracked. “I have been sustaining myself on what I see for ages, in the darkness. I will continue if I must. But you will need my sight. Perhaps you cannot see it now, but I have seen it always. If you leave me here, so be it, but you will return, and by then it will be too late.” The voice that uttered from the cracked lips of the thing was grating, and Mercius was surprised that it could sustain speech for so long.
On impulse, Mercius decided to believe the Watcher, and said, “Very well. You may accompany me outside, but I have no trust in you, and will kill you without a second thought should you give me the slightest reason.”
A toothless smile broke the Watcher’s lips, causing watery blood to drip from them. “The others must come as well, Arkarum. You have freed us all, though you did not intend to.”
Mercius looked at him for a long moment, before motioning him down the stairs. As he went to take the things arm, it shrugged him off and made its way deftly down the spiraled staircase at a pace that Mercius could barely keep up with, despite his lack of eyes. Darius and Peter followed, and he could feel their uncertainty.
When they reached the outside air, the Watcher took a long, deep breath, tilting his head up to the lightening sky as if he could see the blackness departing.
Mercius looked into the decrepit face and asked, “Where are these others that you speak of?”
“They are in the towers, of course. But never mind. They will be joining us momentarily. They were simply waiting to see what transpired between you and me. Now they know, and will come.”
“Do you have a name that you are called?” Mercius asked.
“We were given names when we were created, but that was so long ago that we cannot remember. You shall call me Maul'din. I am the leader of my kind, and you will speak only to me, for the others only speak through me, having no more voices of their own. I will give them names for you, if you require it for your…human sensibilities, but it is a moot point.”
The other Watchers joined them. There were three more. Each had been blinded either by needle or fire. There was another male figure, and two females. They were all equally haggard and tattered and rotten. Mercius looked into each of their faces in turn, and was given a brief nod of salutation by them all, as if they could see his gaze.
Suddenly, and without a word, the Watchers strode away from Mercius, to where Nephilia lay close by on her litter. She still lay prone and looked as if she hadn’t stirred since Mercius had last seen her. The four ancient creatures knelt beside the angel and made as if to lay their hands on her. Mercius started toward them, furious and afraid. But their hands hovered over the sleeping being, and each looked to the sky. There was a murmur in their throats, Mercius thought, but it was too low for him to be sure that he heard it.
Then, after long moments of this, they rose as one and faced Mercius. “She lives,” Maul'din said, “but she is weak and lost. Mor'denaa, with some strange force that was lying hidden in her attack, sent her to a place that can only be reached by a small handful of individuals, and her survival is in great peril. The Watchers cannot go there, but I fear that you must, if you wish to save her.”
“Where is this place?” Mercius asked, concern thick in his voice.
The Watcher did not respond. He simply gazed sightlessly into Mercius' face for a moment, then strode away, leaving Mercius to repeat his question loudly to the thing’s back. He was ignored.
When all of the dead were finally carried out of Mor'denaa’s compound, Mercius took a small group of stalwart men and placed the severed heads and limbs of the fallen demons around the walls of the place; a warning that the reign of evil was coming to an end. It was grisly work, but it was done quickly and surely. The high walls of the compound were now ornamented with dangling fruit, ghastly and appalling
Mercius and the small clean-up crew met the rest back at their camp.
Keira was covered in blood and gore from tending to wounded and dying men all day, but to Mercius, she was as beautiful as the sun. When she saw him, she rushed to him, tears in her eyes. She violently wrapped her arms around him, and he grunted from the pain in his ribcage. She chose not to notice his discomfort. Instead, she squeezed him tightly and rained kisses and tears on his neck and face.
“I don’t know what I would have done if you didn’t return,” she whispered breathily into his neck. Keira had of course been given word that Mercius had lived through the battle, but she refused to hope until he was safely in her arms.
Finally, she released him from her embrace and led him by the hand back to his tent. There she gently stripped his breastplate and shirt from him, and gasped at the wicked look of his torso. There was one large, purple bruise on either side of his ribs, and his flesh hand been flayed open to the bone by the hulking demon’s claws. At least two of his ribs were broken, she told him, and he would have trouble and pain breathing for several weeks. Other than that, after she wrapped his wounds, he was sound.
Keira laid him down on his bedroll, and kissed his face and forehead gently. Mercius tried to rise, claiming that he had much to do, but the woman would not allow it. Finally, even though Mercius wanted to question Maul'din extensively, he gave in to the soft bedroll, and fell into a deep, dream-ridden sleep.
Mercius walks alone in the darkness. There is agonizing pain in him, but it does not come from his broken sides; it is in his head and his heart; in his very soul. The darkness is the source of the pain. The darkness delivers the pain, feeds on the pain, relishes in the pain.
Mercius walks, though he has no legs or feet in this place. He simply moves forward, through the utter blackness. Slowly, the dream world takes its ghastly shape. There is ground, and he is given a body to feel it. Barefoot, his toes squelch in the mud, and are cut by shards of bone and teeth. A wind rises, slowly but persistently. The darkness flutters on the wings of the wind. Its heat sears his flesh. Something inside him calls to the wind; to the blackness; and it answers with a wail of madness. Whispers of demon-speech ride on the back of the scorched air, beckoning him, and driving his sanity away.
Mercius walks steadily forward, until the darkness is broken by shards of fragmented, dancing light. The light carries its own darkness, as if it is but a child of the blackness that surrounds it. The light is horrifying, and Mercius weeps. Fear spreads through the pain that torments him as he realizes what this place must be. This is Hell, he thinks. I have been cast into Hell for my folly.
He moves to the light, knowing that he can’t outrun this oppressive dark. He moves with fear in his heart and evil threatening to enfold him. He sees her, and he knows. It is not he, Mercius, who is in Hell. No, it is her; the angel; the divine. Nephilia. She is wracked with pain, he can see it in her face, but she utters no screams. Silver tears leak from her shining eyes, only to be sucked dry by the light and the dark. The flames of the light lick at her hair, which grows back rapidly, only to be singed from her head once more.
Her skin is scarred and broken; they have been plying her flesh with agony, but she shows no sign of fear. Only acceptance and waiting.
“Mercius,” she whispers. It is hoarse and dry, so unlike her voice. She is dying; being snuffed slowly but surely out of existence by the evil of Hell, the only force that could bring her so low. “Your quest is righteous,” she says, her head hung and her limbs shaking with the pain. “Follow your heart, and let your love destroy the evil that lurks in you.”
Now she is receding. He cries out to her, but she does not hear. The shadows crawl from the darkness to feast on her flesh. Still she does not scream, only weeps for the light that she has lost. Mercius races towards her, meaning to destroy the shades that torment her,
but he is driven ever backward, away from her. Unable to help. He screams and flails and weeps, but it is no use. He cannot reach her.
Mercius awoke, screaming and sweating. Keira was by his side in an instant, having kept a vigilant watch on him all the while. She took his head into her hands, and he cried on her shoulder. Keira didn't understand the sobs; something about being trapped and tortured. She couldn’t make it out. She whispered sweetly and softly into his ears, putting all the love she felt into her kisses and caresses as she stroked his head and back.
Finally, Mercius composed himself, and the tears subsided. He held to Keira for several more moments, before standing and dressing in silence. When he finished, he stepped outside of the tent and gazed over the camp before him. The troops were fed and most now lay sleeping off the battle fatigue.
The sun was setting, its light making rainbow haloes of color that danced along the horizon. Without turning Mercius said to Keira who he knew had followed him out of the tent, “Gather the marshals, my love. I have something to say to them."
When his marshals were present, including Keira and Sophia, he said, “Nephilia is imprisoned, and I must rescue her. I will need your help, as well as the help of the legion, but you cannot follow me all the way to my destination. Only I can go there, I believe. We will rest for tonight, and through tomorrow night, then we march.”
“Where, Mercius?” Peter asked. “Where is she kept?”
With a darkness that startled all of his friends dancing hungrily behind the green of his eyes, he said, “In Hell, Peter. Nephilia is trapped in Hell, and I have to save her.”
For a moment there was silence, then Jax, always the loyal and sturdy friend asked, “And how do you plan to get to Hell, lad?”
In a whisper, Mercius answered: “Asgoroth. There is a place, far below his dungeons, that leads into the Pit. It is there that we march.”
There was a collective sigh through the tent, but all of them saw that Mercius would not be dissuaded from his chosen task.
He walked out of the tent, and to the edge of the camp. The sun had set, and twilight darkened toward night. The campfires shone like golden stars as Mercius looked down on them.
He sighed heavily. Evil behind and evil before. Mercius knew that he would be hunting these evil things that spoiled the world for the rest of his life. He would find no peace, he thought. Only darkness, shadows, and pain.
But, with strength in his heart and steel in his spine, he hardened his will. A breeze crested the hill on which he stood, and took his whisper with it. “Father. I’m coming home.”
The road to Asgoroth’s dungeon was long and difficult, for Mercius insisted on pushing the troops to the limit. They began their march before the sun rose every day, and didn’t make camp until several hours after darkness had fallen. The legion was tired and sore, but Mercius heard no complaints.
Keira was constantly by his side, comforting him in silence and in words. She listened to his fears and his rages, and talked him through his doubts. He could see the concern and fear in her eyes when they lay together every night, but he didn’t comment on them. She was afraid that he was taking a journey from which he would never return. Mercius had nothing he could say to comfort her on this fact, for he himself believed that this would be his last quest, and that his soul would perish in the depths of Hell.
As much as it pained them to do so, the Hammer and the Blade bypassed the Rau'halla and the Numerai that dwelt there, Mercius wishing for haste. He watched Nephilia sleep, for hours on end, as she rode in a wheeled cart beside him. She seemed peacefully at sleep, but he knew that she was suffering through great agonies in the darkness. Every time he looked into her blissful face, he wished for more speed. He was running out of time, he knew. Nephilia was being slowly murdered.
The Hammer and the Blade passed swiftly through blackened, obsidian dessert, in too much of a hurry to be oppressed by the wastelands. They were thankfully unmolested by any demonic force. In fact, Mercius could feel a slight decrease in the ever-present hovering evil. It seemed that the earth had responded to the downfall of Mor'denaa. It seemed to breathe more comfortably.
And thus they approached the city of Drurador. It was a small joy for Mercius, seeing his forgotten home on the horizon, and he reluctantly had agreed to spend two nights resting there. When the Hammer and the Blade approached the city, however, they saw nothing but ruins and smoke.
They entered the once-towering walls of the city, and were immediately plagued by the stench of burning flesh and rotting bodies. All who had dwelt there had been killed, it seemed, their mutilated bodies hung unceremoniously from the buildings. Mercius walked through the destruction with his jaw clenched and his eyes dry, but he could hear the wails of the bereaved legion at his back.
Mercius stared at one of the walls of the city for an hour. Written there, in blood, in the language of Hell, was this:
Mercius. Your Master awaits you. Come if you dare, so he may feast on your soul.
Keira was at his side, and he translated the message for her. It did nothing to ease her fears for him.
The Hammer and the Blade spent the remainder of the day in the ruined city of Drurador, cutting down the hanging corpses and burying them. They put out the fires that smoldered throughout the city with grim determination.
The legion spent the night outside the city walls, and it was a solemn, grief-stricken silence that surrounded the camp.
The following morning, with heavy hearts, the troops made for the mountains, the desert beyond, and the dungeon that awaited them.
The crossing of the mountains was much easier than the first time Mercius had done it, and even Jax admitted that the snow covered passes were much quieter than they once had been. No hoary demons assaulted them, though their wails could be heard on the frozen winds.
The company descended into the foothills and the forest that covered them. Mercius was taken by nostalgia, remembering the fond times he'd had with Jax in the dense woods. But he did not linger in this place or in his thoughts. For he had a mission; a reckoning; a destiny with Asgoroth.
Mercius left Keira and Sophia in the woods. Keira voiced her disdain for this decision loudly, but he insisted, and, eventually, she relented. Their farewell was teary-eyed and heart wrenching, but it was done quickly. Mercius admonished the small company he left with the women and horses that should any harm come to them due to their lack of vigilance, he would have his swift and terrible vengeance upon them.
Mercius remembered little of the desert from his flight from the dungeons years ago, but there came to him a vague sense of memory: the blackened rocks beneath his feet, the stench of sweltering heat in his nose, the feel of the searing wind on his brow. He was clutched by a gloomy sense of irony that this place had been the first to greet him when he was freed, and would be the last he saw before he perished. Mercius no longer held to any illusions that he could save Nephilia and make it out alive. But it was something that he knew in his heart he must do; a path he must follow to its bitter end.