Chapter 15 - The Mace of Icarus

  Once Sham left, the group followed the cobble trail to the edge of the forest, where it met an entanglement of overgrown weeds, vines, and thick prickly trees that blocked the sun out completely. Beneath the veil of darkness, familiar yellow eyes lingered. The hairs on Han’s nape stood up at the sight, and he shuttered, remembering the sting of the iron claws that scarred his soul.

  Grizzel used the tip of his mace to poke some man-sized bushes that had captured the road, “Well that’s just our luck, isn’t it?”

  Tex drew her sword, “It’s just devil’s root.”

  Grizzel tilted his head, “Whose… what?”

  Tex sighed.

  Han exhaled a nervous chuckle, and replied, “The plants, Griz.”

  “Oh,” Grizzel poked the bush again.

  Taenith drew his sword. “Is it safe?”

  Tex chuckled, then swung her sword through one of the bushes. “Yeah…just don’t let it eat you.”

  Taenith had a puzzled look on his face, and she rolled her eyes. “I’m kidding… Don’t crush it up for tea and you’ll be fine. We’ve got bigger things to worry about.”

  As if on queue, a loud guttural scream echoed from the bowels of the woods, and the several chirps and sounds of birds and bugs halted. All that remained was an eerie silence that allowed everyone to hear their hearts bouncing about in their chests like toy balls being kicked around by sugar-crazed children. All except Tex’s, of course.

  “Hells no! That sounds like that thing from before!” Han blurted, drawing an arrow from his quiver and knocking it shakily into his bow. It was then when his eyes became blanketed in the vision of blood outlining the body of the creature which had nearly taken his life the last time they were in the forest.

  “Quiet,” Tex held a hand up and squinted her eyes, as if getting a better view of the forest, despite its pitch blackness. After half a minute of silence passed, another amalgam howl pierced the woods. Tex closed her eyes and listened to its unflattering sound - its orchestra of bear roars and wolf howls, mixed with the cries of scared deer and other prey whose voices drowned under the weight of the others. The unnatural melody lasted ten seconds, then, almost immediately, it stopped.

  Tex lowered her hand. “It’s just a mimic,” she said before cutting down more weeds.

  Han’s mouth dropped. “A mimic?”

  “They’re toads that can replicate the sounds of predators. One probably met your friend at some point,” she said.

  Taenith looked to Han, noticing his vibrating fingers and bow.

  “Maybe we can find another way around,” Taenith suggested.

  “We’ll be fine,” she said, before turning around to push through the thick brush that barely allowed any room to move.

  The three stood there for a few moments and watched as the knight disappeared into the forest.

  Han took a deep breath. “It’s fine, Taenith. Let’s just do this… Like she said. If we see the beast, we can just kill it. Right Grizzel?” he faced the apostle, whose open mouth and half-squinted eyes said enough.

  “Yeah. Uh sure,” Grizzel nodded.

  “Right then. Let’s get going,” Taenith said, leading the way.

  Once inside the dark woods, Taenith could see fragments of Tex’s armor as she ducked and weaved between stray branches and tangled foliage. Her smaller frame allowed her much easier passage unlike Taenith’s tall draconic build. Several vines tugged at his powerful ankles as he stepped over various infantile shrubs and unbloomed flowers. He spent so much time minding his steps that he barely noticed Tex halt in her tracks at the end of the artificial trail she had created with her now sap-glazed sword. Taenith ventured to her side where witnessed the thick wilderness slowly evaporate into sun-drenched flats. They were as normal as any other grassy plains he had seen during his time in the countryside - save the black shroud that scarred the landscape in front of them. It was as if the grass had died and the ground itself was plagued by something sinister.

  “What is that?” Taenith asked. As he spoke, Han and Grizzel escaped the woods behind him, only to notice the diseased landscape as well.

  “I don’t know,” she said.

  Tex withdrew her sword and stepped forward. Taenith held up a hand in protest, but it was in vain as she stamped a foot into the rotten grass.

  “What are you-” he began. But when nothing happened to her, he exhaled and joined her with the others.

  “This…” Grizzel began. His tone was devoid of sarcasm or wit. “This is chaos magic.”

  “I don’t know, Griz,” Han knelt to the ground and jabbed a finger into the earth. To his surprise, it was moist - almost wet like dirt after a light rain. But its darkness stuck to him like sap. “...Feels a bit like a blight.” He faced Tex, wiping his hand. “Does that sort of thing happen around here often?”

  “No,” she mumbled. The mace at her side thrummed, in sync with the pulsating purple veins that raced through the blackened ground.

  “Grizzel is right. No blight could cause this.”

  “Try a purification spell,” Taenith suggested.

  Grizzel hesitated for a moment. Though he was an apostle at one point, he didn’t really study the purification spells that most knew. He’d rather not disappoint his teammates, however. With that in mind, he nodded and summoned pairs of white energy onto the palms of his hands.

  “Here goes nothing,” he muttered, laying his palms on the ground. Immediately, the surrounding rot rumbled beneath his touch, and high-pitched scraping yelps quickly spread throughout the rest of the blackened plains, as the purification penetrated the veil of its darkness. Tex and the others gripped their ears as the screams crescendoed into a melody of madness.

  “Stop!” Taenith shouted as he pushed his palms tighter against the sides of his head. The shrieking felt like it was penetrating his very skull, shattering it into sharp fragments that stabbed into his brain like needles.

  Grizzel winced in pain as he tugged from the ground to no avail.

  “I can’t!” he cried, “It’s stuck onto me!”

  A small trail of blood trickled down his ears as he struggled to tug back. In quick succession, the darkness began enveloping his wrists. Before the chaotic melodies and plague could overcome him, however, Tex grabbed the apostle’s shoulders and forced him backwards. Once the light left the soil, the loud hissing stopped and the darkness remained where Grizzel tried to remove it, dripping from his arms like liquidated soot.

  “I don’t understand. Why didn’t Grizzel’s spell work?” Han asked.

  Tex chuckled.

  “What’s so funny?” Grizzel groaned as he rubbed his bloody ears.

  “Your light,” she wiped blood from her cheeks. “It’s too weak.”

  “What’s that supposed to mean?” Griz asked.

  “I think she just said you suck,” Han offered.

  Grizzel’s eyes widened and he nearly opened his mouth to retort before Han gently put a hand on his shoulder.

  “All this darkness could only have come from a powerful chaotic entity. I’d say all the umbral magic here was cast by a fiend of some kind,” she said, looking over the bubbling infection.

  Han stammered, “umbral magic?”

  Tex remembered back to how Sham explained it earlier. “Chaos magic… death magic. It corrodes life,” Tex said. “Gods, where is the old man when you need him?” she thought to herself.

  “Oh great. Instant death kill spells. Why am I not surprised?” Han ran his hands through his hair, exhaling.

  Tex shook her head and looked to the mountains a few miles away from them. It was then when she noticed the day around them dim. Looking up, she became witness to an encroaching dark sky - filled with bloated stormy clouds. Surges of purple exploded from the magical mass every few moments, extending its reach further and further towards them until eventually, she imagined, it would engulf the entirety of the cursed plains.

  The mace at her side was practically vibrating at this point. So, without a second thought, she turned to the others, who had also just noticed the clouds above.

  “We need to go. Right now,” she ordered.

  “What, scared of some rain?” Grizzel replied.

  Tex glared at the apostle. “If you want to vomit up your liquified organs, be my guest.”

  Grizzel’s eyes nearly popped out of their sockets before he shut up and listened.

  Indeed, that’s all anyone needed to hear before joining after her. The group tried to sprint back to the woods at first. They were almost immediately stopped, however, when another plume of clouds rolled over the tips of the trees and into the plains, bringing with it a wall of thick rain that bleached everything it touched in darkness.

  “Shit,” Tex grit her teeth and watched as the clouds swelled and stretched around them, its individual strands circling clockwise around a mass of thundering violet magic condensing at its center. Tex frantically searched her mind. Oceans of thoughts and experience flooded her as the umbral anomaly converged over them. She could try and use Icarus’ mace, but if she did, she’d attract even more chaotic entities towards them. She could try and contact Sham, but she knew that trying to establish a psionic link in a dense magical storm would be impossible. No, she had to solve the situation with only her sword… and the idiots she was stuck with.

  “Listen up!” she shouted to the others. A downpour of rain exploded from the magical storm in droves. But it was no ordinary rain. Upon contact, the nightmarish umbral droplets stuck to their skin and armor like ink to paper, before slowly expanding to any remaining exposed skin.

  Taenith pulled Han close and motioned for Tex to join them as he spread his wings to protect them from the bulk of the downpour. Grizzel, however, summoned a magical barrier above his head, which seemed to prevent some of it from covering him. Though, like before, his light wavered in the face of a power far greater than his. It would only last a few minutes.

  “Don’t let it spread!” Tex shouted, desperately peeling back the magical fabric that covered the thrumming sheoldritic weapon at her side.

  It was now or never.

  Before she could brandish the mace, however, a sudden streak of lightning shot into her arm and sent her spiraling beyond Taenith’s grasp. Smoke and red electricity sparked from the knight’s arm as she lay unconscious, rain splattering against her bare flesh.

  “Tex!” Taenith shouted. But as he turned to see where the attack came from, he heard a loud, thunderous crack, followed by a burning sensation on his chest. The next thing he knew, he was face-first in the dirt, and his vision went black.

  Han instinctively went to help his friends before a small company of humanoids dressed in black robes and crude steel armor materialized around them, as if out of thin air

  “You won’t be needing that today,” the largest of the figures chuckled with a smirk etched across his crimson face. Grizzel frowned when he realized the leader was some sort of demon. He was nearly the same height as Taenith. Though his hunched back hid several inches of height. Limbs that may have at one point been connected to wings, poked out from his blood-rusted armor. His face was speckled with scales and his eyes burned yellow like hot coals. The others of the group circling them, however, were masked and seemingly human, judging by their height and forms.

  Grizzel shot a glance to Tex and noticed she still hadn’t moved since she was blasted by the fiend’s magic. Taenith was in a similar state. Han frantically drew his bow and knocked an arrow to fire on command.

  As they readied to defend against the attackers, more and more black rain poured over them. It would only be moments before their entire bodies were soaked in the viscous plaque.

  The demon turned to Han and held up his empty hands, “Now, now. Let’s stop that. There’s no need for you to die too. We just want her,” he gestured to Vanador.

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  Han’s fingers shook as he struggled to maintain a steady shot. Never in his life had he even heard of demons let alone see one in person. He left them to urban legends and loremakers. Now, he was face to face with one.

  Grizzel saw his partner’s unease and approached the sheoldrite without hesitation. Though he was truly shocked to see one of their kind in reality, he wasn’t about to let an anarchical beast live. It was his duty to silence chaos.

  “If you mean no harm, you’ll stop this rain,” he said, narrowing his eyes. His right hand slowly inched towards the glowing mace at his side.

  The sheoldrite licked his scaled lips and smiled, “Very well.” He snapped his fingers. The clouds producing the black rain disappeared, replaced by blue skies and a gentle breeze. Han exhaled heavily as the black magic began to evaporate from their forms, but maintained his aim regardless. Not dying was a plus, but he wasn’t about to let the creature pull a quick one on them either.

  “Why do you want her?” Grizzel asked. Several of the hooded cultists behind him looked at each other and chuckled.

  “To take back what belongs to Icarus,” he paused and curled his maw into a devilish smile, “And to kill her for her crimes against him.”

  “And what if we kill you instead?”

  The fiend craned his neck closer to the apostle and laughed, quickly followed by the chattering chorus of his followers.

  “How would you expect to do that? With a bow?” the fiend smirked at Han before shaking his head and pointing towards Grizzel’s mace, “Or with that glossy piece of tin?”

  Grizzel laughed and scratched his head, “That’s kind of the plan, yeah.”

  The sheoldrite gave a twisted, almost entertained sneer.

  “You’re amusing. I’ll give you that,” the sheoldrite chuckled before approaching Tex. He knelt down and examined the mace. He had waited years for this moment, even going as far as to coat his flesh in enough divine blood, the rarest commodity of Sheol, to survive its deadly power. With a smile, he grabbed the weapon and held it upwards to gaze into its macabre beauty.

  “Oh, the lord will be pleased with this,” the fiend exclaimed to his followers, who raised their weapons and cheered in unison.

  Their melodic chanting made Grizzel cringe as he walked up to the distracted demon from behind with his mace in hand. Several followers shot daggers at the apostle as he approached, but none dared intervene, lest they incur the sheoldrite’s wrath.

  “Alright, that’s enough,” Grizzel said as he swung the mace upwards.

  The sheoldrite caught a quick glimpse of gold before the enchanted weapon slammed against the side of his face, causing him to drop the artifact and stumble back.

  Seeing that the creature was still alive, Han aimed towards his throat and released an arrow. Before it could impact, however, the sheoldrite shot his arm upwards and caught it before turning it to ash. Then, with the flick of his wrist, he sent a wave of umbral magic at the bowman.

  "Shit," Han thought, before the magic barreled over him, knocking him unconscious.

  “Han!” Grizzel shouted, gritting his teeth.

  “I spare your lives. And this is how you thank me?” The fiend wiped his jaw. Stray saliva and blood dripped from his battered mouth as he regained his composure. “It was a courtesy not to kill you. I personally don’t enjoy needless slaughter. Unlike my friends here,” he motioned towards his small army of followers. Each of them chuckled sadistically, impatiently squeezing their swords and spears.

  “But now…”

  Grizzel frantically banged the top of the mace against his palm as the demon spoke.

  “... What are you doing?” the demon growled.

  “This is awkward,” Grizzel said, nervously. “That was supposed to kill you.”

  The sheoldrite blinked, dumbstruck. “I’m going to kill you now,” he said, forming a flaming longsword in his hand.

  A bead of sweat dripped down Grizzel’s face. “Taenith, time to wake up!” he shouted.

  No response.

  The sheoldrite snickered, licking his lips, “You think your friend will save you? Don’t make me laugh. What can they do, covered in wounds?” he said, fire whipping around the sheoldritic steel that finished materializing in his grip.

  “You got this,” Grizzel chanted to himself, tightening his grip on his mace. The two locked eyes, and prepared to fight.

  ---

  As if on queue, Taenith snapped back to reality. His chest burned from the acid, but he ignored the pain. He whisked his attention to Tex, who was still down, then to Han… who was also on the ground. The only one left was Grizzel - whose magic was no match for the sheoldrite’s. The draconian cursed. He knew he had to come up with something quick to help. Thoughts raced through his mind frantically until he caught notice of Icarus’ mace. It was only a couple yards away. Stealing another glance at the seething sheoldrite, it was clear that Grizzel had pissed him off. If the two engaged in combat, he could easily make a dive for it. Without Tex’s glove, it would probably kill him. Then again, Grizzel’s mace was supposed to kill him, and it didn’t back at the tower.

  It was at least worth the risk…

  As Taenith recollected his thoughts, Grizzel charged the fiend. When their weapons clashed, violent waves of magic exploded into the air. However, due to the demon’s superior strength and skill, he managed to overpower the apostle - forcing him backward. Then, with one swift motion, he swiped his booted foot under Grizzel, sending him to the ground with a heavy metallic thud.

  “Meaningless efforts from a meaningless man,” the sheoldrite spat and launched the spiked tip of his foot into the apostle’s side. Grizzel cried out in pain as the various spikes punctured his armor and sunk into his ribcage.

  Grizzel dug his hand into the muddy ground and wheezed, watching as his own blood trickled like tiny rivers away from him. “Shit… Guess this is it,” he groaned, desperately clutching his mace with his free hand. For a moment, he was tempted to accept his fate. That is, until he noticed Taenith was no longer where he had been struck down. “...Taenith?” Grizzel thought, before he saw the draconian slowly crawling towards Tex’s artifact. A grin stretched across the apostle’s muddy face. Luckily for them, the cultists were completely oblivious - drunk on their master’s display of power. And he had to keep it that way.

  Grizzel turned on his back to face the demon, and let out a wheezing laugh. “Was that the best you got?” he chuckled, gripping his leaking side.

  The demon’s toothy smile turned to a deep frown. “You talk too much,” he said, approaching the apostle with his flaming longsword raised into the air like a flag.

  “Do your worst,” Grizzel smiled, spitting up blood as he pushed himself to his feet, readying his shining mace in vain. He glanced over to Taenith, who nodded back at him.

  The demon sneered, and grabbed the hilt of his enchanted blade with his free hand. As he was about to plunge the sword down onto the human, however, Taenith leapt for Icarus’ mace.

  “Stop him!” one of the cultists roared. Several of the hooded figures bumped into each other clumsily as they raced to stop the draconian from stealing their master’s prize.

  The sheoldrite turned to see what the commotion was about. But before he fully realized what was happening, he felt another blow from Grizzel’s weapon. This time, it struck him in the knee, causing him to stumble back-first into the ground.

  “Take that!” Grizzel laughed, then winced in pain. The sheoldrite quickly stood up and bared his teeth towards him - failing to realize his followers had been unable to stop the draconian.

  Indeed, as Taenith wrapped his hands greedily around the ancient hilt of the sheoldritic artifact, his mind was penetrated by umbral whispers - echoes of words beyond his comprehension. Each phrase sent electricity through his bones, and adrenaline through his veins. Then, swirling red magics sprouted from the mace’s jeweled head and into the draconian’s mortal form.

  The sheoldrite grinned, “Fool! Only those with divine blood can touch the mace and survive.” He laughed as thousands of years-worth of chaos magic - oceans of umbral power - flooded into the draconian’ s feeble vessel. But after a few moments, his boastful grin turned to a frown. When the last drop of magic paired with the mortal, he still stood, unfettered by the supposed death that should have destroyed him.

  “...How? How?!” the sheoldrite spat and roared before charging the draconian.

  “Not so fast!” Grizzel interjected as he swung another attack at the demon.

  “Out of my way!” the creature shouted as he summoned a bolt of black lightning and swung it into the apostle with a loud, ear shattering crack, sending him reeling into the grass. Then, with a growl, the sheoldrite swiped his black sword at the draconian, striking him across the neck. It would have been the perfect decapitation.

  But when his blade made contact with the mortal’s flesh, veins of corrosive maroon magic snaked through its cindering metal, snapping it like frail glass. In seconds, the sheoldrite was left with a bare hilt, the the rest of his sword reduced to a pile of burning metal on the ground. The sheoldrite stood, paralyzed, until a violent hurricane whipped from Taenith’s form, pressing him and his followers back against their heels.

  The powerful winds caused Tex to wake. Her neck and eyes roared in protest as she looked to see what scene had begun to unfold. When she witnessed Taenith wielding the mace, a pit of anxiety opened in her gut, and she wanted to shout. But when she tried, her body failed her. All she could do was watch as her new ally succumbed to destruction.

  “Kill him!” the demon shouted to his minions, who all paused for a moment before shouting war cries and charging with their swords and axes raised.

  “Perish,” a cluster of dark voices chuckled from the depths of Taenith’s mind.

  Before long, he could feel the exposed wounds on his side close and his vision clear. When he saw the cultists charging towards him, he stood and raised the mace. With a grin, he released a wave of gaseous black smoke that roiled over them. Once it settled, their eyes dulled white as their souls extruded from their bodies and permeated the air around them in a ghostly glaze.

  The demon looked upon his fallen comrades with wide eyes. Taenith shot him with a glowing golden gaze, sending him a suffocating anxiety that shattered his core.

  Taenith raised the mace, aimed at the demon’s chest.

  The demon was speechless. No mortal should have been able to wield his master’s terrible power. And for the first time in his immortal life, he felt true terror, knowing that not even his soul would return to Sheol after the hellish weapon laid claim to him.

  Ideas of mercy bubbled to Taenith’s thoughts in that moment, but the fiend had threatened his friends. He made his choice.

  “Kill him,” the voice whispered into his ear. Taenith stared into the trembling voltaic eyes of the fiend. He was afraid. And that fear seemed to feed the voice. It grew until it felt like his skull was splintering. Taenith cried in pain, wavering his aim at the creature.

  “No mercy,” it seethed.

  “No mercy…” Taenith repeated. His senses became numb as effervescent green magic crackled from the tip of the mace. He tried to raise it once more. But his muscles recoiled, as if his own body was rejecting him. Or succumbing to another.

  The sheoldrite noticed this hesitation and mustered a snarl. However, the divine blood that shielded his body from Icarus’ magic was beginning to flake, so he knew his time was short. Extending his skeletal wings, then, he thundered into the sky - leaving behind him a graveyard of spectral apparitions dancing around their umbral-caked corpses.

  “Consume,” the voice beckoned in waves of crushing avarice, sucking in the souls of the cultists. Each one fueled Taenith with an intoxicating high that numbed his head and softened his hate. The draconian sucked in a breath of the damned air, and closed his eyes. The power the weapon held was gruesome, yet… fantastic. For once, he could defend himself and his friends, and destroy their enemies, permanently. But the sirens of chaos ushered him to continue the bloodshed. The sheoldrite was gone, but he had to kill more…

  He needed to.

  “Taenith, drop the mace. Now,” Tex said.

  Shaking his head, Taenith watched through blurred vision as Tex limped over to him using her longsword as a makeshift crutch. Blood continued to pour from the magical wound and though she tried to maintain a stoic face, he could see her wincing of pain.

  Why would she want to take his power away?

  “It is yours. She wants to take it,” the serpentine voices echoed, coiling around his mind like a snake.

  She coughed and raised her gloved hand outwards. “Please.” Her voice was soft, unlike he’d heard before. The sudden change in character confused him even more.

  He didn’t want to release the weapon. It protected him.

  “If it weren’t for me, we’d be dead,” Taenith’s thoughts uttered. His wings twitched as she approached him. Her hand, like the voices, ushered for his cooperation.

  “Taenith… Please. Let it go,” she said, her voice almost a whisper.

  Taenith stepped backward, tail flicking behind him. He hesitated before raising the mace at Tex, who instinctively recoiled. She winced as the sudden movement further opened her wounds. Before anyone could react verbally, the mace released a ray of green light that slowly enveloped her broken body. A moment later, her gashes closed. Even her shattered bones fused together. When the spell was complete, he turned to Grizzel, then to Han, and did the same. Once he was sure they were healed, he handed the mace over. The voices screeched and complained, causing him to clench its hilt tighter. But after a moment of struggle, he laid the weapon into her protected hand.

  When the mace left him, his mind cleared, but everything else felt naked. The fog of power that consumed him faded into nothing until all that remained was his plate mail and his rusty scimitar. Just as before, he was weak.

  “Thank you,” she muttered before taking the weapon and storing it into its bag.

  Silence veiled over the group for several moments. Though the skies cleared into bright blue expanses and the demon’s umbral magic no longer plagued them, the rotting corpses and vaguely sentient spirits floating above them dampened the mood.

  “So…” Han began, tip-toeing over one of the corpses, “What just happened?”

  Tex tied the bagged mace to her side. “That’s the power of an elder god.”

  Han nodded, rubbing his head. “Uh huh. Well, thanks I guess.”

  Grizzel chuckled. “Well I’d say that went pretty well. I think we’re getting good at this!”

  Ignoring the apostle, Taenith looked to the mountains in the near distance. He could see the sun beginning to drape downwards behind the highest peaks as they spoke.

  Tex chuckled at Grizzel’s optimism. “Come on, let’s get going. We’re losing daylight. More will be searching for us now that the weapon was used,” she said.

  Han twitched, “More? Are you serious?”

  When Tex didn’t respond, he hastily slung his bow over his body and ran up to them with Grizzel closely behind.

  When the party looked ahead, they saw a horizon of massive hooked cliffs and snow-speckled peaks that shimmered underneath the sun’s decaying golden rays. Amongst the ocean of gray and white, they could see a small line of brown that trickled up from the base. This trail was their destination.