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The Lost Stars ChronicleChapter 40: Reliving Hell
They set off, down the chamber, to a short hallway at the end. They entered, and once again Sir Dractor felt himself being cut off from the others, and losing touch with reality. All that his senses would tell him was obviously false, and his mind quickly forgot that he was not, indeed, in the Temple Of Lost Stars.
In Sir Dractor’s mind, he was in an old, moss-covered ruin. It was somewhere in a warm, fertile place, but it was nightfall. Sir Dractor felt himself knocked to the ground. He looked at himself. His armor was steaming and smoking. It was broken, bent, and ruined beyond repair. His sword lay in four pieces around the mossy courtyard.
So did some others. The Old Man lay with a huge, charred hole in his back to the side of the courtyard, his staff splintered. Elwen had a broken leg, her bone peering through the skin. Bjarn was lying face down on the stones, not breathing. Shainya’s head was lying several paces from the rest of her. And Luxus....Luxus stood before Sir Dractor, clutching his medallion.
“Leave us alone!” the boy shouted, at a figure that Sir Dractor couldn’t see because the boy blocked his view.
“Or what?” asked a cold voice.
“I’ll kill you!” said Luxus.
Sir Dractor pushed his aching body to his feet.
“NO LUXUS!!!” he cried, but it was too late.
The figure behind Luxus had raised his staff, and blast of sickly, yellow-green light shot from it, and hit Luxus in the chest. T he boy dropped to the ground, dead.
“No!” cried Sir Dractor, and he grabbed Bjarn’s old cutlass, and rushed at the assailant.
The Sorcerer-King laughed at him.
“Still trying, Sir Dractor?” he said, “Better to give up, and live, than to keep trying. Elwen dan Raleigh is mine now, and all the power she can wield.”
Over to the side, Elwen whimpered in pain.
“Not as long as I can fight!” said Sir Dractor.
“Well, that won’t be long,” sneered the Sorcerer-king, and with a swipe of his flame-licked sword, he threw Sir Dractor back, breaking Bjarn’s cutlass, and knocking him to the ground.
Sir Dractor began to stumble backwards, away from the Sorcerer-King, who slowly followed him, enjoying his moment of victory.
“You’re a poor excuse for a warrior, Sir Dractor,” said the Sorcerer-King, “but you knew that, didn’t you?”
Then Sir Dractor inched back another foot, and found himself back in reality, in the next chamber. He collapsed to the floor and wept. It was only a minute before Sir Dractor's iron hard training took over. It was just an illusion, he told himself, and pulled himself to his feet. His armor was fine, his sword intact and where it should be. Bjarn, Shainya, and Anardan had all made it across before him. And Luxus...Sir Dractor whirled around. In falling to the ground, he had left Luxus in the hallway.
Luxus stood in the hallway, alone…again. In his visions, he stood in a small hall, an average house. His mother was there, smiling happily. Luxus felt the sensation of heat around his legs, and looked down. T he houses foundations were a burning mess, flames spitting up into the house. The woman’s face changed, distorted. The house exploded, causing a sickening thud, and sending Luxus high into the sky.
Black, heavy darkness was all around Luxus. He saw his family, and the Fellowship. He ran towards them, but didn’t seem to be moving. Sir Dractor stood, as did the others, and they began walking away. Luxus used all his energy to run towards them, but he couldn’t move. He attempted to scream, but nothing came out. The group disappeared into the darkness...
The other eight persons also were drawn apart into their own memories. Bjarn was reliving the moment his cousin Isaac had learned of his daughter’s death.
“How could you, Bjarn? How the tyco could you? I trusted you!”
“Isaac, it wasn’t like that, wasn’t like that at all! We were ambushed!”
“So you ran and left Patty to die, you mega-”
“NO! I protected her the best I could, can't you see that?? Shifty-Brick, I loved Patty just as much as you do, I wouldn’t--”
Bam. Isaac had punched Bjarn.
“LIAR!!!!! NO ONE COULD LOVE MY OWN DAUGHTER MORE THAN I!!!! YOU WILL PAY FOR THIS, BJARN!!!!!!”
“Isaac!”
“No Bjarn, I’ve heard enough! Get out!”
“No-!”
“GET OUT!!!!!!!!”
Isaac punched Bjarn again, and Bjarn tasted blood, real blood.
Anardan was also walking, his eyes staring blankly into space, lost in the dark void of his memory. A strange feeling had come over him the moment he stepped over the threshold of the Temple, and it seemed that his senses were ripped from his body. He could barely make out through the red haze that enveloped him Dractor and Bjarn staggering ahead of him, slower and slower.
His awareness was suddenly transported wholly from his body, and Anardan did not notice the sharp pain of his knees hitting the musty stone flags, nor the sudden weight of a body falling on top of him. The temple was gone.
A sudden flash of light hurt his eyes as Anardan rushed through the trees, the branches of gray trees clawing at his clothes, but he did not notice. Another burst of green flickering light split through the darkness; a cracking sound now reverberating in his eardrums. There were flames ahead, and screams. A sudden wall of heat burst upon Anardan, crushing him into the ground like a moving wall of blistering stone.
From the ground, he could see. The immense stone structure of Drullen Bell Keep blackened in the flames, the proud battlements crumbling into heaps of charred masonry with clouds of sparks searing the air in fiery paths. Now new scenes took over; Forestman villages exploding in flames, proud trees cracking and crashing in ruin to the ground.
“No…”
Anardan's home, the outpost which had served as his abode for all the years of his life, crumbled before his eyes. Faces he knew, of his father, his mother, his brother...all dead in the ruins. His men were scattered about the ground, dead where they had fallen, the flames whirling about them in a crescendo of smoke and fire. The vision faded into a red mist, fading off into the shadows of the Temple.
It was true. Gib was afraid to go on. His worst memories had yet to surface and if the cruel laughter haunting him in the last passage was any indication...well, thinking about it wasn’t helping and all, so finally Gib put all thoughts out of his head and swung forward on his crutches. Nothing happened. There were no visions or illusions at all. Gib smiled, chuckling to himself. I’m alright!
But a sinister voice disagreed. “No Gib, you’re not alright.”
That voice! No! “No, leave me alone!”
“What? Why, Gib? Don’t you remember all the fun we had last time? And this time maybe we can kill a few of your friends.”
Then Gib felt it. The same feeling he had tried to forget ever since Aezazal left him. Like being engulfed in fire or stricken with an unbearable illness. T he pain piled upon him, filling every inch of him with an empty deadness. He was surrounded. Engulfed in a burning blackness that penetrated his very soul. Evil and death were all Gib knew, and even the memories of light goodness were swallowed into the endless dark.
Shainya’s head was filled with images, not words. She was caught in a whirl-storm of images, images of death and suffering, images from the past, and images of a future that could be. Reno, hands bloodied and gory; Dale, pale in death, a saber skewered through his heart; Bjarn, his legs and hand obliterated; Rosa, slicing open Radjar’s throat; Luxus, devoured by wolves; Sir Dractor, his entrails leaking out from underneath a boulder...all the while the pale-faced man with the monocle laughed insanely...
“Alright, you tyco temple, that’s ENOUGH!”
The images dissipated. Shainya blinked. Bjarn was in front of here, gesticulated angrily at the pillars and walls around him.
“You are evil, you Temple Of Lost Stars! You fight us with things we cannot retaliate against, you fight us with our own weakness! Megabloks you!”
Blood was flying from Bjarn’s mouth as he spoke. In another corner, Aros and Anardan were a few feet away from one another, staring at Bjarn. Voolmark was sprawled out on the floor. Gib was silent and still, like a statue. Sir Dractor was weeping quietly.
“Bjarn, what happened your mouth?” cried Shainya, breaking Bjarn’s tirade. The old Forestmen drew his fingers up to his mouth and looked at the blood on them.
“Isaac punched me.” he said, then corrected himself with a confused expression, “No -- I mean, I ran into that pillar...split my lip…”
Reno was the last one across. It took a moment before he remembered where he was. He had just plowed through a very painful memory involving Dale’s death and the resulting accusations. From where he was, he could see Gib, murmuring something under his breath.
“Dark to daylight, stone to sky,
Caterpillar, Butterfly,
Waking, sleeping, buried, blind,
Come and seek me, come and find…
Life to dying, peace to war,
Never ending, nevermore,
Thinking, trying, doing, done,
Save the morning, kill the Sun…”
The hermit looked something fearful. What, with his eyes were rolled back in his head and all. The passage seemed like an eternity to Gib, even when in reality it was only a couple minutes. It ended abruptly, though not nearly soon enough. But suddenly Gib was out and Aezazal was gone.
“Are you alright Gib?” said Reno, coming over to him.
“Who-who are you?” Gib stammered, “Where am I—what am I doing here?”
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