Twisted Destiny - Chapter 118

FieryKathy

I heal my wounds as quickly as I possibly can, at least until my wing is able to support my body again. The rush of mana gets me on my feet fast, the pain I felt by getting smacked against the wall, melting like ice in the sun. When I launch myself back into the air and get a better view of the field of battle, the situation is outright chaotic. The entire theocratic army is in disarray and is fleeing for what came out of the obelisk. They don’t even think about teleporting out as panic has set in completely within the ranks. The defenders on the walls are staring in disbelief at the ghostly monster.

A blast rocks the monster but it continues towards the city, undisturbed. It was a cast by Nikki. The fiery explosion is followed up by a blue streak of light that hits the monster in it’s arm, a shot from my girlfriend’s bow.

I can also see my sister and Hilda chasing the big monster down, trying to get a couple of hits in on the legs before the shadow figure moves away from them again.

“Ami, what the fuck do we do!?” My sister uses her skill to yell to me, knocking down a couple of fleeing soldiers in the blast. “Oops! Sorry!”

“I have absolutely no clue.” I reply back and aim my sword at the figure. A ray of light hits it in the chest. The creature recoils and stops for a second but continues moving again not that soon after.

Suddenly another blast, this time from some kind of ice magic hits the creature from the other side, followed up by lightning and a blast of air. I follow the trail of magic and find another player party of a couple of wizards and some other melee adventurers. They must’ve been fighting on the side of the theocracy as mercenaries. I fly closer to them while launching blast after blast into the shadow.

“Hey angel lady!” An Ulusu spearman calls out to me. “Guess you could use some help!” A couple of their party members look quite wounded so I decide to cast a fast AoE heal on them.

“Thank you. Just keep hitting it, we must stop it before it reaches the city.”

The Ulusu spearman nods and throws a glowing spear into the shadow which swiftly respawns in his hand. The rest of his party also continues throwing everything they got at the creature.

Having seen this, the few player parties that are left on the battlefield also decide to join in in trying to stop the shadow monster. Even some casters and bowmen that were part of the theocratic army itself join in. All this combined fire power considerably slows down the advance of the shadow creature. This gives me the opportunity to go down to my own party and quickly discuss our plan.

I swoop down next to Hilda who apparently expected me to come down. “Our new allies are definitely a welcome surprise.” She says as she takes a break from throwing daggers for a moment.

“If only they decided to do that a bit sooner. It would have avoided a lot of bloodshed.” I nod. “Do you have any plan for this thing?”

As soon as I say that the creature slashes it’s left arm towards another player party but luckily all of them manage to dodge the attack.

“I don’t know… it looks like it’s made up of the souls of people…”

“Yeah… that’s what I was thinking too. Maybe they were sacrificed to infuse the obelisk with magic?”

“That’s possible.” Hilda stops to think for a second. “Could you try to grant the souls peace? I mean ,you are practically a Goddess… so you should be able too, right?”

“Uh… Maybe… but how do I do that?”

“Well, you are the Goddess here, not me.” Hilda pats me on the shoulder.

“That’s… not super useful…”

Hilda continues throwing her daggers while I stand still and look at the giant shadow thing for a bit longer.

“Alright, Ami, you can do this.” I talk to myself and with a beat of my wings I’m soaring through the air once more. I give the fiend a quick circle around to see if any of our new allies need some healing but it looks like most of them are in pretty good health. Then I take up a position right in front of the shadow creature. It’s still slowly but surely advancing on the city while ghastly words emanate from its entire body.

I put my sword away and dispel my shield as attacking the thing will only help to slow it down. The shadow takes another sweep at me which I barely manage to dodge.

“Okay… how do I make you listen to me…” I try to get its attention. “Please, calm down. Please don’t harm these people. They’ve done nothing to you.”

But the ghastly monster continues on it’s path. It’s like my words don’t even reach it.

After I dodge another slash I decide to take a different approach.

“If talking with it doesn’t help… then maybe listening will…”

I fold my hands and hover in front of it, and I close my eyes. I know full well this makes me the easiest target to hit but I can’t think of something else.

The unholy aura hits me in full force. It feels like I’m being pulled into a void. But instead of resisting it. I give it full access to my senses. “Speak to me…” I whisper softly.

“Ami, watch ou-” My sister’s voice gets cut off and silence surrounds me.

When I open my eyes I’m in pure darkness. I look around and after a second the dark place I’m in starts changing. It slowly morphs as torches appear on a wall in a dark and damp room. Hundreds of cells line the outer edges. All of them, empty. In the center of the room, priests stand around a table with some kind of long dark crystal standing next to it. A person is screaming, bound on the table. But the priests do not care. They are working with some kind of ritual knife.

“Stop that!” I cry out, but no one reacts. When I reach out to pull one of the priests back my hand just goes through him. They stab their knife into the prisoner’s chest, not a scream this time. Just silence. A haze leaves the hilt of the knife and flows into the dark crystal.

“Throw it with the others.” One priest says as the others take the body from the table and drag it off into the darkness.

“By the Goddess… that’s how those souls ended up in the obelisk…”

In a split second the room changes again and I end in the middle of a completely dark space once again, but even though there is no light whatsoever, I can see my own body perfectly fine. Out of the darkness two middle aged people walk towards me. A man and a woman, both Ulusu.

“Hello?” I face them.

“Hello.” They both solemnly greet me. Then a lot more people walk through the veil of darkness towards me. They are of all races and all ages. They form a circle around me.

“What… what is this place?”

“You are inside our consciousness…” The woman replies. “What you just saw was a memory we all share…”

“Y-you are saying… that you were all sacrificed to build the teleportation obelisk?”

The entire group of people nods at the same time.

The Ulusu man continues. “We all got arrested for several things… speaking badly about the gods…”

Another man continues. “Small crimes like stealing bread for our hungry family…”

A Drakone girl. “Being at the wrong place at the wrong time…”

A Langor elder. “Or being accused of something we didn’t comit…”

The woman who spoke to me first now gets the word back. “Then we were all brought to that dungeon… you saw the rest of what happened…”

I can not believe what I’m hearing. My mind just can’t process the horrible nature of what the theocracy of Osvik had done. Tears start running down my cheek. “Thats… I don’t even… I don’t even know what to say…” Hatred starts boiling in my chest.

“We know that feeling…” The Ulusu man speaks. “It’s that hatred… the urge for revenge that is driving our spectral image forward…”

“We can not control it…” The Ulusu woman continues. She must know that the spirit’s current target houses nothing but innocents.

Suddenly an idea springs into my mind. It’s risky but if it works…

“Do you know where this dungeon is?” I ask.

“It’s deep down below the main cathedral in Bolasf, the capital of Osvik.” A younger Ulusu man from the crowd speaks out and steps forward together with a couple more people, some of them wearing the Osvik military uniform. “We helped build the place, but were disposed off to keep the secret. We didn’t know what it’s purpose was going to be until it was too late.”

-So the general populace doesn’t know…-

“Okay…” Serenity flows over my body once more. I know what to do. “I want your attention.” The group of people put their full attention on me. “I’ll try to go and set things right but for this I need your trust.”

“We can sense your goal is pure and just, young one.” The elderly Langor man speaks. “What do you need?”

“I need you to entrust your souls to me.”

“All of us?” The middle age Ulusu man asks. “But you are just one person…”

“You will just get harmed.” The Ulusu woman replies.

“It’s the only way to avoid any further innocent casualties.”

The group stays silent and watches me for a couple of seconds before the younger Ulusu man nods. “We will do as you ask.”

Another split second later and I’m back, hovering above the battlefield with the spirit in front of me. It’s arm is practically touching my body.

“Ami! Are you okay!?” I can hear Sam yell at me.

Before I can reply, the ghastly shape’s surface stirs and it starts breaking up. All the dark miasma then rolls onto me and gets absorbed into my body. I start to hear voices in my head, voices from the people I’d just spoken to, but also from the others who’d stood by silently. I can also feel what they are feeling: hatred, sadness, despair… But luckily I can keep it in control, at least for the time being. It only takes a couple of seconds before the entire being has disappeared inside of me.

“Holy mother of the Goddess.” People cry out and start to kneel to me, Osvik and Dwarger soldiers alike, even some players are doing so too, their hands all clasped in prayer.

“Ami!?” My sister calls out to me.

“I’ll be right back! I have something to do first!” I call back to my party.

“Where are you going!?”

“Osvik!”

“Wait, what!? For real!?”

“No time to explain, got to go.”

I concentrate on the images of Osvik’s capital’s market square that flash in front of me, belonging to the young Ulusu man’s team.

A bright blue light surrounds me and a second later, I’m gone.

FieryKathy