102. Of descends, fights and a little bit of lost control

Cassandra Pendragon

Nope, neither sunshine nor rainbows but at least I didn’t find myself in the middle of the ocean. When I had stepped through the portal, a brief moment of vertigo and disorientation had led me into an atrium, for want of a better word. From the corner of my eye, I saw a doorway and the first steps of a wide staircase that vanished into the earth. The walls were bare but polished stone, a reflective surface crisscrossed with lines of shimmering metal, glowing faintly in the dark. Behind me the energy of the portal still hummed reassuringly, my way back was still open. Unfortunately I couldn’t quite concentrate on my surroundings, a still bleeding corpse in the middle of the room commandeered most of my attention.

There, practically at the centre of the chamber, laid a chimera, with the head of a lion, the body of a goat and the tail of a serpent. Black blood oozed from deep gashes in its hide, some clean and narrow, others wide with frayed edges. It looked like the creature had been attacked with swords, claws and magic and had finally succumbed to its injuries after an intense battle. Cracks in the floor still told the tail of mighty blows and scorching magic, unleashed in a fight to the death and the fur on my tails rose with the echo of powerful spells that still hung in the air.

Carefully I walked closer, my eyes transfixed on its head, ready to jump back at the slightest movement. One of its eyes had been clawed out, ruptured shreds of skin plastered around an empty socket, that was half filled with coagulated blood, turned its expression into a sick wink. The lolling tongue had a greenish shade and appeared somewhat swollen to me, completing the image of a macabre grimace.

Slowly I crouched down and inspected the wounds across its body. The first telltale sign I found was the tip of a broken dragon tooth, lodged between the chimera’s steely ribs. Viyara had probably clamped down on the beast and tried to break its spine with a violent shake, loosing half of her fang in the process. Several deep holes marked where she had bitten into the beast and the vicious slashes had probably been caused by her claws, as she had raked them across its hide.

Clean cuts with charred edges across the neck and and legs immediately reminded me of Ahri with her fiery wings and deadly blades but I couldn’t say for sure if she had caused them. I still would have been willing to bet on it, though. Methodical dismemberment simply fit her fighting style.

Anxiously I walked around the corpse and searched for signs that one of my friends had been injured, the crimson red spots of blood or a strip of cloth but the room was clean except for the black pools of blood from the chimera. I was baffled, I didn’t know how strong the beast had been, but considering that I had found a broken dragon tooth inside of its body, it definitely hadn’t been a pushover. How had they managed to get through the fight unharmed? Or was I just too blind and had overlooked something?

I knew I should have hurried after them immediately, but I took another couple of minutes to once again scrutinise the corpse, I even ran my hand across its wounds and through its fur, searching for something that might tell me what had happened. Just when I was about to give up and had decided to try to contact Ahri or Viyara one more time before I was going to head down the stairs, my searching fingers touched a swelling on its neck. There was no obvious wound but once I had brushed aside the mane, I saw two puncture marks, the skin around them swollen and red with a sickly pus oozing out of them. It looked similar to a snake or spider bite but the row of idents between them, that reminded me of human teeth, told a different story.

Judging from the size of and distance between the marks, it had to have been someone small, like a child. A spark of fear raced along my spine. There was only one girl down here that I knew of and I had incidentally hooked her up with a strange magic from another time stream. Was Reia turning into a snake or a spider? Had she sprouted venomous fangs? What, in all the hells, had I done to her? I had to find them.

The mental pulse I sent towards Ahri and Viyara didn’t get far, which either meant that they had gone through another portal or that the whole place was protected by enchantments powerful enough to stop it. Since both connection had been formed through transcendent energy, I was fervently hoping that it was the former, because otherwise this dungeon might just proof to be too much to handle and the next corpse I’d stumble over could belong to someone I actually cared about.

With a quick glance I made sure that I hadn’t overlooked anything obvious but except for the slain beast the room was empty. I hurried around its motionless form and peered down another long flight of stairs that led into the darkness, a reoccurring theme down here. I had never before seen this part of the labyrinth, so I abstained from rushing down, head over tails. I still used my wings to hover but I made sure to check every metre in front of me before I crossed it. I had seen the enchantments that had been place outside and I wasn’t too keen on stumbling into the ones that might have been cast down here.

Step after step I descended into the unknown. After only a handful of meters I felt the temperature change. My breath turned into misty clouds and goosebumps covered my body, it had become cold, and with every second the chill crept deeper into my body. I cursed under my breath and pulled the once again tattered remains of my clothes tighter around myself even though they provided very little protection. Shivering I continued on, the glow from my wings the only source of light in the otherwise abyssal darkness.

There were no runes or enchantments along the walls, no decorative murals or warnings, just blank stone and wide, smooth steps that led ever further into the bowels of the earth. It felt like I was leaving the lands of the living behind and slowly entered the realm of the dead, where even the warmth of my breath was sucked form my lungs.

I couldn’t say how long I had been following the stairs when a cold, white light appeared somewhere below me. Flickering and faint at first it quickly became brighter until my surroundings thrown into harsh contrasts connected by dancing shadows but there was no heat, no warmth in the pulsing glare, on the contrary, the light seemed to suck even the last traces of energy from everything it touched and my skin started to tingle all over when my body forcefully resisted the foreign power.

Confident that if there had been some kind of hidden trap I would have already encountered it and filled with fear for my friends I accelerated and crossed the remaining distance in a heartbeat. The walls and ceiling suddenly vanished and I found myself in another circular chamber. Like the staircase before, it wasn’t embellished nor where there any exits except for the one I had just come through. All I could see was an altar in the shape of a pentagram made of white marble. It was the source of the icy glare and pulsed like a gigantic heart. Lines of red ran from each corner towards the centre where they formed a swirling circle, maybe half a metre in diameter, similar to the portal I had stepped through before.

By now, the tips of my fingers had started to turn blue and I couldn’t quite feel my toes anymore but a little energy from my core fixed that problem neatly enough. Unfortunately it did nothing against the cold and my uncontrollable shivering. I clenched my teeth and quickly walked around the altar once. Each corner had a little indent, like a bowl, filled with blood. The red lines were in fact small traces of the crimson liquid that constantly flowed from the corners to the circle at the centre. Even while I was watching, the repositories were depleting before my eyes and I could just about imagine what would happen if they ran dry.

Assuming that it was indeed a portal, it would most likely vanish the moment there was nothing left to fuel it. I was tempted to refill them with my own blood but I was afraid the transcendent energy that had already started to transform my body would somehow cancel or destroy the spell and then I’d have sealed my friends somewhere or even somewhen without a way back. It’d probably be for the best if I didn’t keep on taking chances like that. But that also meant I didn’t have a single moment to lose.

I carefully approached the swirling circle and tentatively pushed a hand inside. It vanished but I could still feel it in an underwater, pins and needles kind of way but I could instantly tell that it wasn’t as cold on the other side as it was in here. Mustering my courage I retracted my wings and dove through the portal head first. Mayhem and destruction greeted me, once I was through. I had stumbled into the midst of a battle.

I had arrived in a vast hall, titanic pillars formed like the trunks of mighty trees rose further up than I could see to support a ceiling so far above me that I couldn’t even make it out. At the far end of the hall was a massive statue of a spider, its folded legs pinning some kind of body to the ground. The space between me and the statue was crawling with all sorts of creatures, chimeras like the one I had seen before, animated constructs, similar to the guardians in the first hallway but larger, with weapons and armour that sizzled with the familiar electrical blue energy. I saw small, crystalline spiders that tripled across the floor or climbed the pillars, spinning translucent webs between hordes of walking corpses, nearly rotten to the bone which made it impossible to tell what they once might have been. And in the middle of it all, I finally saw my friends, back to back, fighting against the overwhelming onslaught. Viyara had changed to her dragon form and Ahri’s wings were ablaze with scorching flames, even Mephisto had materialised, throwing spell after spell into the oncoming storm. Mordred and Reia fought side by side, a snarl on their faces that revealed the fang like protrusions in Reia’s mouth that had proven to be so efficient against the chimera. But even though they were fighting with the courage of the damned, for each foe they slew, two more took its place while each wound they suffered made them just a little bit slower and they hadn’t yet managed to bring one of the constructs down. It was only a matter of time until they would be drowned underneath an avalanche of monsters or ripped apart by a blast of electric power they couldn’t dodge. Not unless something changed. It was time to see how much energy I could now truly wield.

My wings manifested smoothly with a glare brighter than the sun and the hall was suddenly illuminated with a silvery light that sent the shadows fleeing. A moment of stunned silence filled the hall before I disappeared with a shower of sparks and materialised directly in front of the largest golem. Reinforced stone and metal, filled with sparks of transcendent energy parted like water under my wings and a heap of rubble dropped down at my feet. One down, an army left to go. I didn’t hesitate.

Wings fanned out I pirouetted on the spot, swirls of bright light dancing around me while I cut through everything within my reach, be it flesh or magic. If I had any say in the matter, none of us would die today, or at least not die again.

“Cassy?” Ahri’s voice was full of surprise and relive in equal measure. “How?” She didn’t have time for a more eloquent reaction, the incoming waves made sure of it. “Willpower and a boatload of luck,” I grunted in replied while severed heads, amputated limbs and crumbling granite rained down around me. My manoeuvre had given us a little breathing room but I had barely made a dent in the horde.

“Can you hold on for now?” I called over the ruckus.

“We’re fine, do what you can!” That was exactly what I had wanted to hear.

I stayed well away from the tight circle my friends had formed, afraid I might hurt them accidentally and flitted across the battlefield light a lightning storm. Wherever I appeared, golems, undead and hybridised beasts alike went down one after the other, cut to ribbons without so much as a chance at resistance. I moved too fast for their weapons to reach me and their hides and armours provided about as much protection against my wings as a straw hut would against a wildfire. They went down in throngs, clouds of dust rose wherever I had been and the black blood of the chimeras pooled into small lakes all over the floor, filling the air with a rich, metallic scent.

I lost myself in the fight, my consciousness slowly disengaging while I danced from one to the next and sowed death and destruction like and incarnation of the reaper. Figures, faces and colours became blurry behind a haze of violence and with every beat of my heart I pushed more and more energy into my wings. There was nothing and no one who could stop me and I revelled in the feeling, for once in my life I wasn’t the one running and scrambling to survive, this time I was the monster who had come to take its due.

I swirled and swayed, the flashes of light when my wings burned through one enemy or the other a visual manifestation of the unheard music I was dancing to. I lost track of time and even forgot where I was while I slowly began to empty the hall of attacking enemies and filled it instead with heaps of rubble, broken bones and ravaged bodies. At first, there was no end in sight and after a while I even started to cherish the fact that there were so many of them. They would keep me entertained for a long time.

A melodious sound filled the hall and it took me a while to realise that it was my own laughter, echoing back at me from the empty space between the pillars, another form of music I could follow. Faster and faster I moved and spun, my whole body vanishing behind swaths of silvery sparks and torrents of energy. I turned into a blazing star, burning everything which dared to cross its path into oblivion.

Exhaustion and adrenaline made my legs tremble and my hands quiver despite the copious amounts of energy I supplied them with but still I didn’t stop, I couldn’t, not until the very last of the things that had dared to raise their hands against me and mine would be gone. Not until this hall was clean and my friends were safe would I even consider slowing down. Plus, I couldn’t remember the last time I had had so much fun.

So I continued from one end of the hall to the other and back again, I tore through webs and bodies alike without a care, until:

“…Cassy! …gone!” I knew that voice, I loved that voice but why, what?

“They’re gone! Please, Cassy, they’re gone. Please stop! It’s only us now! You’re scaring me!”

As if someone had emptied a bucket of cold water over my head I woke from my trance, I’d never do anything to hurt her. I blinked owlishly in the flickering light that filled the hall from a myriad of small fires that licked and nibbled at the remains of my victims. Grime and gore covered me from head to foot and I stood alone. Alone atop a mountain of corpses while the people I cared about stared up at me with a mixture of awe and terror. I tried for something akin to a smile but the gesture might have been lost since my eyes rolled up into my head and I fell unconscious.