Category: Books

Tough day, will not let that stop me.

At first the two fighting-men hesitated to slay, instead hoping to avoid the crawling wretches. But Nat hissed as one flailing claw struck his foot, chilling it immediately and making him stumble. Only Maddox’s lightning-fast grab of his shoulder kept the other man from falling. He stabbed down with his sword in the next motion, skewering the frothing attacker through the back. “Gah!” Maddox muttered. “I could feel the cold through the blade.”

“It will pass,” the Monsignor told them both. He idly impaled a few crawlers himself as they picked their way to the far door, seemingly indifferent as to whether his strikes killed clean. “They have just enough will to suck up heat, but wound them once and they can think of nothing else. But killing them works well enough, too. I do not suppose you fine fellows would like to wager on who can strike the most? …No? Pity.”

It took five minutes — or an hour; Nat and Maddox found time to oddly flow, down there between the braziers — of fending off the slow-motion stalkers before the three reached the doors that marked the end of the chamber. The Monsignor made no secret of his amused contempt as he watched the other two try to strike only those that came too close. “I tell you again: these creatures are weak. Too weak to be worth consideration. They chose to be here, and this is their reward. Why not amuse yourselves?”

So I didn’t get as much done, but I got it started, and that was the hard part today.

The rooms were oddly proportioned, and worryingly angled. Shapes were wrong, and so were the shadows. The only light in each chamber were from great braziers, set outside the rooms themselves; their baleful fires flickered through tall, yet dirty stained glass windows, bathing each room in fantastical colors. It should have been darker; and yet the shadows themselves seemed to radiate an anti-light that revealed, yet brought no comfort.

This first chamber was all in blue, and the Monsignor made odd, mocking symbols with his fingers as they entered. “This is the Hall of Deserved Languor,” he told the other two, “and we must pass through it quickly.”

“Who would stop us?” Maddox started to mumble, then snapped his head as if fighting off a sudden weariness. “There are no defenders.”

“Look to your feet, fool!” Maddox bristled, but Nat looked – and then he swore, for some of the shadows were moving. The Monsignor muttered and threw up a mage-light, revealing the shadows to be crawling men and women. Of a sort: they were gaunt, with eyes always blinking, and hands and feet that were halfway to claws. Slow they looked and slow they moved, but there was a blind hunger in their faces that was no less cruel for being torpid.