Chapter 65 #2
Before Niko could protest, Araes slipped into the shadows.
The passageway was colder than the rest of the keep, its air damp and oppressive.
His breath hitched as he plunged deeper, following the narrow hallway as it slithered between the keep’s exterior walls.
Araes raised his sword, surrendering to the mildewy darkness.
The corridor opened into a small room, no larger than a bathing chamber.
Torn banners and flags hung from rotting wooden rafters.
The ratty fabric swayed gently in the moonlit breeze creeping in from a small cracked window opposite the entrance.
Araes heart thrummed a cautious beat as his gaze etched over the floor.
Broken crates sunk into the damp flooring, their contents, rusted helmets and shields, scattered across the cracked stone.
His vision acclimated to the dim room and caught on a mass in the corner shrouded under a soaked woolen blanket.
The leather sole of his boot cracked on something brittle as he approached.
Araes didn’t dare get too close. Pale, yellowing bones, bare of any shred of muscle tissue, littered the floor.
The mass didn’t move as he tucked his blade beneath its cloak, but the hairs on the lieutenant’s arms pricked.
He took a step back as he flicked the woolen fabric off.
His defensive stance faltered. The corpse-like creature peering up at him, with jaw slacked from a silent scream, held a golden dagger, identical to those wielded by the rebels outside.
An icy chill seeped into the room, like frost on a late autumn morning.
Araes didn’t dare move, not as the decayed creature’s fingers loosened from the blade and it clanked to the floor.
Leathery skin stretched over waterlogged bones as its hollowed chest inflated.
“Fuck…” Araes whispered, his gaze held prisoner by black, depthless voids.
The creature’s teeth chattered as it cocked its head toward the lieutenant.
He knew he should raise his weapon and plunge it straight through the death wielder’s heart.
Every breath taken was a wasted opportunity, but his body refused to respond.
Like roots burrowed through the broken stone floor, his knees remained locked.
The death wielder shivered to life, its teeth chattering and clicking with a taste of Araes’s fresh scent on the air.
Bones cracked as its elbows bent the wrong direction.
He’d faced enough of these things to know he shouldn’t be afraid, shouldn’t tremble with the terror now flooding his veins, but this creature was different.
It rose on mangled bare feet, its toes snapping into place.
Araes backstepped, attempting to gain distance before it lurched for him.
His boot caught on a tarnished helmet. The clank of metal echoed through the room, reverberating off the walls. After so many weeks of sneaking through the woods on intelligence missions, how the fuck did he keep letting this happen?
The death wielder’s neck cricked toward him, its unseeing eyes registering the movement of its prey.
It would be a fight, then. Although exhausted and aching from a full day’s battle, he was stronger than the last time he’d faced these things. That day by the river he’d slain three with barely a sweat broken. He took a breath, letting time slow around him.
Without the river’s masking scent or deafening roar, the death wielder’s heightened senses tracked him easily as he maneuvered around the room, but its body was sluggish, limbs heavy.
The creature lunged for him with snapping jaws, but Araes had already dove across the room.
Putrid water splattered as he dodged the oncoming attack, sending his stomach curling.
Araes closed off his smell. He couldn’t afford the distraction.
Not when the death wielder’s claws raked over his cloak, barely missing his calf.
Araes kicked himself up, moonlight scattering off his blade’s edge, and faced the creature. The death wielder’s skeletal fingers fell to its sides as it contorted into a crouched position. With gnashing teeth, it crawled toward the lieutenant, black sludge oozing from the holes in its chest.
Araes pulled a half-buried shield from the mud pit at his feet and slid the leather straps over his forearm.
His pulse roared in his ear, but he steadied himself, digging his boots into the muck.
The death wielder lurched for him again, but this time he didn’t flinch, didn’t dive away from the attack. He simply let the creature pounce.
Its chest squelched against his shield as the two fell to the ground. Araes locked his knee around the death wielder’s sinewy legs, feeling bone snap against the force. It shrieked in pain as Araes spun them and pinned the creature to the ground.
Without hesitation, he plunged his blade into its heart, watching black sludge spurt from the wound. Araes clamped his mouth shut, feeling the aftershocks shudder through the death wielder’s body as its life seeped out and pooled on the floor.
Panting, he heaved himself up, never letting the grip on his impaled sword falter.
The death wielder remained limp, its skin sagging around bone.
Araes smoothed back his grime-covered hair, refusing to inhale the putrid, sulfuric scent, and inspected the creature once more.
His pulse quickened. Illuminated in the moonlight was a slash of scarred flesh trailing from the top of its brow to just below the hollowed eye socket, the raised ridge of skin identical to that of his old commanding officer, Captain Theos.
Soldiers roared and boots thudded just outside the window as all hell broke loose.