The Abyss Stares Back - 06

The apartment building’s fourth floor hallway was dark. The smell of urine and iron mingled as a flash of steel ruptured the umbral air.

Sloan’s thin blade was plunged into the eye of possessed occupant, puncturing out the back of their skull, spilling their gray matter on the floor. The figure jerked and twitched but their one good remained eye fixed on the blackguard. A twisted grin contorted their face like they were enjoying the death that had been dealt to them. This was what demons loved more than anything else. The slaughter of innocents. Especially if they could puppet the innocent into said slaughter. Sloan hated this.

She twisted the blade and yanked it free. The possessed tenant collapsed to the floor where they lay gasping their last breath.

“Wulf?!” she called out, turning around to find the watcher pinned to the wall by a large man wearing a butcher’s bib.

More and more figures slowly emerged from neighboring apartments, each of them with expressions of malicious glee plaster upon their faces. They had tried to make a quick exit but for every step they took another of these possessed thralls would attack them.

“Help…” whimpered Wulf who didn’t have the strength to fight back. Not like she did.

The butcher was large but Sloan knew how to fight larger opponents.

She stepped close, using the opportunity as the butcher was focused on the frightened watcher, and plunged her caned rapier into his armpit. Unsurprisingly, the butcher didn’t cry out in pain. Only laughed and swung his meaty hand at the blackguard. Sloan ducked and quickly retaliated now that his guard was open and stabbed her blade into his throat. He tried to grip her head but she leveraged the blade to push him into one of the apartments before turning to Wulf.

“Get up.”

The watcher tried his hardest to catch his breathe. “Th-th-thanks.”

“Fight back.” Sloan spat out as she spun around to swing her blade at another attacker.

“They’re just people!”

“Not anymore!”

Another wretch jumped at them, their mouth agape as if trying to bite at her face. Sloan kicked them in the chest and sent them flying down the opposite end of the hallway.

Wulfgang gripped his baton and raised it to swing at the nearest target and found himself staring at the face of a young half-elven teenager. Their face was gaunt and their eyes looked tired. And Wulf hesitated. He could not bare striking this child with his weapon. Only then did their vacant expression turn into a twisted grin. Much too late did Wulf notice the small knife the teenager brandished and before he could react it had been buried into his gut. Wulf screamed in agony and much to his horror the teenager laughed with such horrible glee.

Sloan’s bladed cane cleaved the air and was impaled through the teenager’s head, in one temple and out the other. One eye jerked upward but the other remained fixed on the watcher. They continued to sneer. Sloan twisted the blade and threw the teenager down to the ground, pulling the blade free from Wulfgang’s stomach.

“Fight or die!” Sloan exclaimed. “There is no helping them!”

The butcher reemerged from the nearby apartment and in one swift motion picked up Sloan and threw her into the wall. She could feel the bricks crack from the force of her impact. Wasting no time, the blackguard began savagely plunging the bladed cane into the butcher’s side, hoping his human body would give in before she did.

A figure approached Wulf. With one hand clutching his bleeding stomach and the other wrapped around his baton, he watched an old woman with white eyes step out of the darkness. Her face was grief stricken and she held out her hands in a pleading motion. “Please”, she said. “Please help us.” And then, as he had feared, once she was within striking distance, her expression turned dark and she rushed him. Only this time he was ready.

Wulf swung his baton at her head, smashing it into the wall. Her body collapsed and blood splattered the floor. She looked like she was in pain. But she laughed. She laughed so horribly that it froze the blood in Wulfgang’s veins. But he had to fight. He had to make it out to see his family again. And so he swung the baton down to finish the job.

A voice from the approaching crowd called out to him. “Yes, spill all the blood. We will sanctify this building with their life.”

Both Wulf and Sloan looked up at the voice and saw a horned figure standing amidst the crowd. Their eyes glowed a baleful red. But as the figure disappeared into one of the apartments they could no see something else moving in the darkness amongst the crowd. Something large. Wulf couldn’t see what it was but Sloan could.

“Oh shit!”

Fearing she might be running out of options, Sloan pulled blade from the butcher’s side and wrapped her free hand around it. She closed her eyes and focused as she recited a brief incantation. The words seemed to echo within this enclosed space, and then she pulled the blade through her hand, coating it in her blood.

There was a brilliant golden flash for a moment before everything went dark again. Wulf glanced over, not really understanding what had happened. And there he saw Sloan jamming the bladed cane into the butcher’s chest and much to his surprise the butcher’s body was convulsing. He was actually feeling pain!

Then, as she pushed back her opponent, she pulled out the blade and the brilliant golden light returned. It was shining from the blade itself! In the darkness of the fourth floor hallway, it seemed almost blinding.

He could see her bloodied hand seemed to give a low crimson glow and under her breath she muttered something, some incantation. Sweat trickled from her brow as she maintained concentration on the holy power she had imbued onto the blade. A screech engulfed the corridor and all around them the possessed thralls recoiled in terror at the light. All but the large figure, which now fast approached them.

“Behind me.” Said Sloan as she stepped past Wulf.

The watcher stumbled behind her just as she raised her blade to deflect a blow from the large figure which now became illuminated. The sight of it horrified Wulf in ways he had never experienced. As a modern man who had spent most of his life in Kirkholm and only experienced the occasional magic, this threatened to break his mind.

For before them now stood a nine foot tall amalgamation of bone, muscles and organs, each carved with demonic sigils and runes. It roared at them using lungs and a skull that did not belong to it. In his terror a horrible thought invaded his mind as he gazed upon this demonic flesh golem. “This is where the organs went.”

Sloan pushed the creature back who seemed unphased by the holy aura. The creature regained its footing and retaliated with a long carved bone that both acted as its hand and a sword. It was a creature created only to kill. Sloan deflected and then ran her blade through the creatures head. It grabbed the bladed cane with its other had which was sown together out of bone, muscle and sinew, and pulled it out.

“Sundra kar, It’s been a while since we’ve fought a blackguard.” The horror vomited its retort.

Sloan didn’t offer a response and instead darted forward and in a mad flurry plunged the blade into the creature’s chest seven times in the blink of an eye.

The monster laughed and impaled its jagged bone arm through her shoulder and then slammed her head into the wall. She collapsed to the floor and lost her blade and suddenly the holy glow disappeared. All hope seemed dashed against the brick wall as the creature roared with sadistic joy.

It was then that Wulf saw something embedded in its chest. A bone charm of some sort.

A bewildering recklessness gripped the imperial watcher and he found himself, against his will, rush towards the creature. His shoulder and stomach engulfed his mind with such pain as he had never felt before, but he knew he had to act or else he’d be dead.

The creature slashed its bone arm at him, raking the wall apart as it did. But Wulf, either through incredible tactical wit or sheer clumsy luck, tumbled forward and rolled under the strike. Only to get back up to his feet within reaching distance of the bone charm. In a daring feat he reached into the monster’s chest cavity, now feeling his nostrils overwhelmed by its nauseating necrosis, and pulled out the bone charm. Flesh and tendons tore off it and suddenly he held it in his hands. He was then horrified to see the creature still standing and now rearing its skulled head to look down at him.

“Sloan!” he found himself screaming in terror.

Suddenly the blackguard rose up behind him and reached out to grip the bone charm still in his hands. Her bloodied fingers digging into it, smearing her blood upon its calcified surface.

“In the name of Dumah, I rebuke thee.” She spoke and her words seemed to reverberate throughout both of them,

Wulf felt the charm crack and shatter in their hands and the monster suddenly fell apart and collapsed to the floor. As if whatever demonic power compelling its earthly remains no longer held any sway over it.

Sloan’s eyes grew heavy and she began to fall forward, as if losing consciousness.

“Hey, hey!” Wulf exclaimed. “Stay awake, stay awake!”

The imperial watcher didn’t think it possible but the pale woman looked even more pallid than normal.

“B-b-blood…” she muttered.

Wulf’s eyes widened in horror. “My blood?”

Sloan chuckled drowsily. “No…in the carriage.”

Wulf looked up and saw the remaining occupants slowly closing in on them. None of them seemed to lament the loss of their monstrous ally. They simply stared at them, with a deranged hunger in their eyes.

“Sure. Get you there in a moment.”

The lamps of the hallways seemed to grow dimmer and dimmer and soon all he could see was the minute sheen in their demented eyes.

“Hey!” a disembodied voice called out from the entrance of the hallway.

The thralls turned to look and suddenly an immense daylight flooded the hallway. It was as if the sun itself had pushed its way into the building to greet them and with it a familiar holy aura filled the air. The thralls shrieked and shielded their eyes from the light as they recoiled back into the neighboring apartments.

Wulf, still holding up Sloan, peered through the light until he saw her. A familiar female watcher standing by the entrance wearing a long blue coat and leather boots held up her hand where a small orb hovered. It was the orb that emitted the sunlight, it seemed.

“Hurry!” Maeve Browlin called out.