Arcanist In Another World-Chapter 25: Voices
Lord Zahul’s fog was an intoxicating drug, and its voice was like the song of a siren. It pulled at his Heartstone. It promised to take the pain away, the thoughts, the memories, and forge him into something hard beyond anything human could breach. Acceptance would bring relief to his churning mind. Off with anything that had ever bothered him in this second life.
Nomad refused.
He brought the sword up with all the frustration in his stone, the mail underneath the chest piece rattling, mana hissing in his throat, and caught a floundering skeleton below the ribcage, stabbed it through with the tip of his sword, and hacked it sideways before bounding forward.
In the din, the voices were no more. The chaos was the best remedy to his broken mind.
The fog seeped into his visor, tendrils of it dancing alluringly in the corner of his eyes. More foes and the crunch of bones. They dampened the siren’s song. Then he was swinging, sword catching the pitiful fools and sending them sprawling over to the others, the thrill rising in waves, the Heartstone thumping in his chest.
Lines pressed him from behind, humans scrambling to get to his aid. He scarcely needed their intrusion, but he liked the blood. The sight of it as it trickled down through their faces, the thickness of its consistency as it pooled over the dead bodies, the smell of it as it burned its way through his nostrils.
It almost made him feel he was back in the old, back to where he really belonged, his brothers at his side, Laran with his giant shield, Bart resting his hammer over his lap, Resni all worried about how things changed and kept changing, shadows looming, shadows seeping, talking and whispering, Terek telling him that it was high time they leave the past behind.
They were all dead now. He was the only one remaining and wasn’t even half the man he’d been. A damned skeleton with a hoax of a heart beating in his chest. Memories broken and false. Constantly fighting against the voice of a Master. Still deep in the clutches of that same shadow.
It’d jerked him around like a piece of ripped cloth and flung him down in the depths of the world, only to raise him again and make him do its bidding.
Not much of a choice, Nomad reckoned. He was a coward through and through, and the notion of being dead still scared him to the bones.
He sent a Skeleton Soldier spinning back, lunged in, and plunged a knee up to its non-existent gut, felt his bones crunch against its rotten skin. With the pommel of the sword he dented the side of its skull, dented it deep and well, made a tangle of it before the rot burnt off its sockets.
Somewhere deep in his mind a notification blinked. Then confusion filled him. He reckoned another memory was about to make a mess there, as it always did whenever he’d gotten a level, but it wasn’t that. He’d had someone with him, no? A young man a touch strange of mind, of body, and magic both. Where was he, anyway? He should’ve—
Streaks of black lights poured down from the ceiling of the cave. They came in heaps and stabbed at the earth, stabbed at the men and skeletons with wanton fury. Up there, high round the cave, dozens of Wards were in a craze as they let the human Magi batter them with spells and instead focus on their little line here.
Nomad halted and glanced back, saw the young healer there standing before an Oarfang’s corpse. A real corpse, its rot already seeped out and left a crumbling mountain of a carcass behind. It’d have taken a squad of undead to deal with a creature like that. A score of soldiers and a chief at the helm, all taken by Lord Zahul’s fog so that they wouldn’t feel or hear any pain at all.
But that amnesiac healer of a mage did it. Nomad licked at the single patch of flesh dangling from his upper lip, and smacked his helmet with the pommel of the sword. Felt his mind settle true with a crack. Felt his thoughts draw back from shadow and fog at once.
At least the bloody Berserker was there, skin reddened up and face slick with sweat, fingers bruised around where her knuckles likely rammed into the Oarfang’s corpse. She was an odd one, Nomad reckoned. She gave him the creeps, alright.
They looked spent after their little tussle with the beast, chests heaving, eyes staring blank at the aftermath, unaware that the Wards were trying to reach them both. Or just healer, Nomad reckoned, it was hard to tell.
Back to being the compassionate undead, then, back to that safe space again. Voices stilled whenever he was in the company of that young healer. Ceased to exist with muted anger that something so primal had come to such close proximity to their servant. Afraid that he would catch them, and strangle them with his surges.
Nomad shook his head and lumbered back, cleaving another line of skeletons before sweeping an eye across the chaos. Help was coming. He could leave the healer to their hand, and go off on his own. They had the numbers. The Lightmaster was there, strolling about the lines, face beaming with a smile that didn’t quite reach his eyes. Acting as if he wasn’t purposefully stalling for his guild to get some levels out from the battle. Reeking of divinity so false that it hurt just looking at him.
Toward the undead lines, it looked like Lord Zahul’s pupils were about to make a move. The apprentice Liches had some quality to their magic, and with the fog filling their stones, they could take a few of those Wards with little effort, but the Necromancer himself… The bastard was just too tough for their skin.
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If he even forced Lord Zahul to use his pawns to trim the mana off his core, then he ought to be over Level 200. That meant he was a match of them both, hence why the Lightmaster must’ve spared the formality of Lord Zahul breaking the Pact by using his fog.
His cursed fate finally gave him a pat on the shoulder, it seemed. All this chaos and the Necromancer would take some weight off his stone. Give him an excuse. Carried by the deathly venom. Chased by a number of skeletons. Down in the caves that stretched and forked like a maze. Anyone could get lost there. Even an officer in the making.
There was one man who wouldn’t let this pass, though. Nomad could feel his presence like a knife pressed to his neck. A mountain of an undead carving bones out in the front, clad in steely plates from head to toe, fingers of his armored hands wrapped fiercely around a spiked mace.
His men gave him space not by choice, but by the sheer force of the bastard as he twirled that mace round, and cut the lines down like a reaper. His emerald eyes were full of filthy fog, shoulders wreathed in a flapping cape of Lord Zahul’s magic. Unlike the undead marching behind him, though, he was sane of mind.
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Being a chief came with perks.
It was time to choose. Nomad peered about himself and saw Celme there, trembling as her blood steam died off. Spent like a flame burned too bright just for a second. That was why you never trusted a Berserker. Too unreliable, her bunch, too mad to depend on.
Nomad scoffed. Looked down at his bare legs, and saw the bones there battered by blows, smeared with blood of men and rot of the skeletons. Looked at himself as he felt the shame and the guilt burn within his stone. To think he’d reckoned himself as some epitome of trust.
But the bloody woman refused to stand up. He’d told her that he’d cut her good if she let anything happen to Valens. And the Wards were closing in, sending their tendrils at the healer as if he was a thorn in the Necromancer’s eye, the other beasts moving through the skeleton ranks and staring daggers at the young man all the while.
What was happening? Why would a Necromancer care for an Oarfang enough to send his horde after a single man?
Up round his left side, well beyond the front ranks of the undead tide, Hook was cutting the last skeletons that would open up the path. Then they would merge with the humans beside him, and then he would see Nomad, and start asking questions. Nomad would babble some excuse that’d make him mad, but worse it’d make him suspicious.
It was the worst venom a man ever had to deal with, Terek had told him once. Once you’re suspicious, even for a loose tile in a damned hall, you become too conscious about it. You check it now and then to see if it's still there. Poke at it to feel round it. Then, when it becomes too much, you try to fix it.
The chief already had an eye on him. That, he knew. Hook was a man of duty, and overly proud of being an officer in the Ninth Legion. A damned good man to get drunk with, no doubt, but a terrible one to make an enemy of.
But Nine Hells, that woman left him with no choice.
“Hold this line,” he mouthed to a particularly stubborn man in golden armor, saw him give a nod, and then left him there with others as he hauled the sword back with a heave. His feet crushed bones and corpses as he weaved through the throng, one eye fixed on a tendril stretching deviously from the Oarfang’s back, trying to be clever and catch the healer from the side.
He bounded across the distance, mana rasping in his chest, and threw himself up as the tendril curled round the corpse’s side and stabbed at the healer’s head. He was too late. Spent all the precious time trying to decide.
But why did he care for a young man, anyway? Just because he made all the voices quiet? Mighty selfish of him, he knew, but wouldn’t they eventually part ways, anyway? There was no point.
Then again, he was never a master at making good decisions.
Valens perked up as if poked by an invisible hand, turned round to face the tendril, spared a momentary glance at the Berserker, and raised one bare hand. The air stirred and shifted, and a gale picked them both. Dragged them away as the Ward’s limb tightened around the Oarfang’s corpse.
The healer had eyes on his back, alright, which gave Nomad the time to close the last gap. He came down swinging the sword over the wriggling limb, felt its tip squelch into it, and draw yellowed rot in a spurt. He twisted about and ripped that part smooth, crushed it down under his feet for good measure.
“Thought you’re too lost in the ranks,” Valens’s voice came with that casual confidence about it as if he’d not expected in the least to get any help from him as if he’d needed not any of it. Then flames stretched out to wrap the ripped tendril in a blaze and ate away the foul mana that kept it animated.
Nomad glanced at him.
Magus and healer both. Some freak he’d come across by a strange happenstance. His long, dark hair had bits of crushed bones in it, blue eyes over the stubble hiding a well inside them. He carried himself with a cold calculation, never did seem to feel anything even when men died in heaps around him.
That’s not how healers were supposed to act. Not to Nomad’s knowledge, at least. Put one of those priests in the cave, then they’d be screaming, tearing up at the death and the living, praying like some god out there beyond the clouds waiting to rescue them.
Not this man, no. He was something else. Nomad was sure of it now, though he wasn’t aware of the particulars. There were too many legends riddling this world, and it was hard to pick one that fit this man.
But to Nomad, he was just a healer who’d saved him from a terrible fate. It was their encounter that dampened the voices in his mind, that meeting that made him utter some bullshit of an excuse before he decided to carry on with it. Without him, Nomad would’ve been already deep in the clutches of the Tainted Father.
“They look pissed,” Valens said as he peered at the dozens of tendrils moving through the cave. Dark lights streaked over and fell down to poison the death with the Necromancer’s venom. Beasts closed the ranks as the human and undead lines crept onward.
Looked like everything was set for a final battle.
“Want me to check those bones?” Valens then said, looking at him with eyes glinting. That made Nomad laugh. All the beasts were out to get him, the skeletons sharpening their rusted spears with their eyes on his head, the hulking beasts hissing impatiently across the lines, and yet the fool of a healer was still thinking about a single undead.
“Leave it,” Nomad said, shaking his head. Then he paused when he caught a familiar sight out of the corner of his eyes. A mountain clad in steely plates was coming up to him. Behind the visor, those emerald eyes looked furious. “Changed my mind,” he said as he tightened his hold around the sword. “I might need you in a minute.”
“What?” Valens scowled.
“You’ll see,” he said, sighing out a long breath. “My chief’s here.”
……
