Oathbreaker: A Dark Fantasy Web Serial-1.36: The Tunnel

The boat glided across the murky waters of the lake. The overcast sky, and the ever present mist of Caelfall, cast the world in a dreamlike veil. Quiet, still, and depthless.

Catrin’s eyes locked on the shadow of the castle looming from the depths of the lake ahead, enthroned within its drowned field of ruined, shattered buildings. She rowed this time, while I watched the depths of the mist, wary of ambush.

“I don’t hear those sentries from before,” I noted. I recalled huge, winged things clinging to the sunken buildings.

“They’re night beasts,” Catrin said. “Might not run into them.” I didn’t miss the hopeful note in her voice. “They’re not all the baron’s got in his kennels,” she added. “The Falconers are chimera breeders.”

I glanced in the general direction of the sun — I couldn’t see it through the overcast sky or the thin veil of mist. The castle was a black monolith dominating the lake, the capstone to the shattered sprawl.

Did the Onsolain really cause all this? I ran my eyes across the ruins. Hard to believe this had once been the site of a small kingdom in its own right, this stagnant swamp and its marshy surrounds.

It didn’t matter. Orson Falconer had made his own choices, and he’d chosen to be a monster. Even if he hadn’t been present in the chapel, he would have made plenty of similar tragedies with the war he sought. His actions had brought this about.

Once we reached the castle, there wouldn’t be time for idle talk. Something else had been lingering in my thoughts as well.

“What Edgar said,” I began. “What I said back at Irn Bale’s house, about you and the preoster…”

“Doesn’t matter anymore,” Catrin interrupted without ceasing her rowing.

“It does. It was cruel.”

She kept rowing. I couldn’t see her face, or tell her thoughts.

“Did you love him?” I asked.

I heard her scoff. Then, after some time she said, “No. Micah was a lonely man. He took his vows seriously, and didn’t get into relationships with the locals. They looked up to him, you know? But he wanted company, and didn’t mind feeling my fangs to get it. That’s all it was.”

She pushed us forward with another long sweep of the oar. “As for love… well, I’ve never gotten on with churches and priests.”

“You didn’t choose to be born this way,” I said, repeating her own words from the castle bedroom. Hypocritical of me, maybe.

Catrin snorted. “You know that doesn’t matter. And as for what you said back in the forest… preosts get their magic from faith, yeah? Even ignoring the blood I took, I think I might have weakened his will. And that let the Baron beat him.”

She glanced back at me with cold, remote eyes. “So yeah, maybe it was my fault. You were right.”

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Our conversation lapsed into silence. We passed by something as the boat drifted through the ruins. A dark mound resting on the surface of the water.

Not resting. Floating. It was shiny black and oily, big as a house. Nearly a score of spears protruded from its leathery, puckered flesh. I’d seen something similar before, when fishermen had used javelins to hunt a leviathan off the coast. I couldn’t see much of it, but a shiny black eye stared unseeing up into the sky near one end.

“The lake monster,” Catrin said as we passed it. “Looks like your hunch was right. The Mistwalkers turned on Orson.”

“Question is whether he’s still fighting them,” I added as we passed the carcass. The castle seemed ominously quiet, just as the village had. No song of battle echoed over the sunken ruins.

Catrin guided the boat into the long tunnel where we’d entered the keep before. As the open sky vanished beneath solid rock, I tightened my grip on my weapon, growing tense.

“You feel that?” Catrin whispered.

“Yes,” I said. We weren’t alone in the tunnel. My aura shivered with apprehension, but it wasn’t just a supernatural sense telling me danger lay ahead. A very real stench filled the cave, overpoweringly foul. It reeked of carrion.

It hadn’t been there the last time.

“Alken…” Catrin was tense as a bowstring. “Maybe we should find—”

Something hurled itself at me through the darkness. The depths of the waterlogged tunnel were nearly pitch black, but not to me. I saw the shape of the thing, bat-winged and leech-mouthed, and swung on pure reflex.

My axe came down in a vertical chop even as I ducked. The axe’s sickle moon blade clove the fanged nightmare from skull to chest cavity. Its bulk splashed into the water some distance behind us.

“Shit!” Catrin swore.

I rested the axe on my shoulder. Its edge glowed slightly, like hot metal. “Keep moving forward,” I ordered, scanning the tunnel ahead.

Catrin did, though her hands shook slightly on the oar.

I sensed more of the enormous bat things ahead. Some kind of chimera, I guessed, as Catrin had warned me. My magic warned me of danger, but not of anything truly profane. Not fiends, but rather ill-formed beasts bound by the Baron’s magic or bred like the war chimera used by armies across the world.

Still, something foul had gone into the make of these.

They had enormous wing spans, and the tunnel was only wide enough for one to take flight at a time. I had that advantage, but the edges of the cavern walls were well beyond my reach. If they simply waited for me to pass, then swarmed me all at once, they wouldn’t need to take to the air…

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Black shapes moved along the walls as Catrin spurred us forward with the oar. I ground my teeth, and decided there was no choice.

“This might be uncomfortable for you,” I told Catrin. I felt her worried eyes on my back. I narrowed my eyes and murmured the words of one of my Oaths.

An Oath is the core of a paladin’s power. It is a pact made with the self, sometimes with a supernatural intermediary which can back the vow to make it more potent, as in my case with the Alder Table. It is not always necessary, and there are True Knights in the world whose vows are entirely personal, born of their own convictions, but those are very rare.

The rituals involved in this brand of magic are old, and much of the might granted to us comes from that long refining.

“The flame is mine aegis,” I whispered, my words causing the very air to shudder. “The flame is my sword. I kindle the flame so the world may know its warmth. Its light is our shelter against the Dark. I bear the torch on the roads of night. I am the torch.”

Saying the words aloud was not necessary to draw on my powers, not always. But saying a thing can do much to make it real.

You do not believe me? I am certain you have experienced this yourself. Have you not apologized to someone you’ve hurt, and known even as the words passed your lips you felt genuine contrition? Have you not told someone that you love them, and felt the utter certainty that it is true in that moment?

To keep a thing locked inside is to never let it be born into the world.

I felt my aura reshape itself in response, the process fast and smooth. My soul had been restructured by the Table for this very purpose.

The pain came too, starting from deep within and rising as a feverish heat to my skin. It burned me, body and soul, but I’d grown callouses. I endured it.

I lifted my axe up with one hand as though to measure the width of the tunnel. Almost metallic olden flames flickered across the rough length of uncarved wood that formed its handle, illuminating the complex patterns etched long the crescent moon blade. Those flames raced up my arm, my shoulder, enwrapping me until I became a living torch of amber hued fire.

“Holy shit,” Catrin said.

Indeed.

Light spilled through the tunnel, illuminating the flock of monsters lurking within. They were hideous things, gray skinned and emaciated, with most of their muscle powering long, avian legs and huge leathery wings. Their heads were like sinuous worms, or lampreys, ending in tiny, sucking mouths lined in needle teeth.

They recoiled from the light and screeched, filling the tunnel with tremendous sound.

None attacked. When the boat drew close, they practically fought each other to pull away from the crackling bonfire of aureflame I had become. Sweat beaded on my face as I maintained the aura, knowing I couldn’t do it for long. I burned my own spirit away with every second I kept this up.

Catrin whimpered behind me. That I had also been worried about. She was only part fiend, but the holy fire was near as repulsive to her as to the baron’s chimera, born of dark alchemy as they were.

The tunnel began to widen into a larger cave. I caught sight of the dock ahead, which would lead us up into narrow hallways where these creatures, with their huge wings, wouldn’t be able to follow. I hoped.

“We’re almost there,” I said to my companion. I had begun to feel cold, and breathing had gotten more difficult.

Once, I could have let that power burn for several minutes without effort, but that had been back when the Table had been intact and the elves still ruled their own city. It was like a cracked fountain basin that drained as fast as it filled, now.

Just like that altar bowl I’d damaged back at the chapel. I could fill myself with duty and resolve, but it would always leak back out.

“It’s too bright,” Catrin hissed. “It burns. I can’t…”

“I know,” I said. “Just hold on. We’re almost there.”

The dhampir steeled herself and rowed forward. The monsters watched us from the shadows, their eyeless heads chewing at the air.

We passed into the cave. Another minute, maybe, and we’d reach the dock. I grit my teeth, fighting to keep the aureflame burning. It had died down somewhat, letting the shadows fill in to half conceal the hellish swarm around us. In this wide space the chimera could take flight more easily. Several of them cracked their leathery wings in anticipation, as though sensing my strength failing.

We reached the dock. Barely a flicker of the flame remained now, wisps of it running across my body so I was more a gently shining figure in the darkness rather than a blazing one.

“Run!” I snapped at Catrin. She shot toward the doorway in the cave wall, faster than any human could have, feet slapping against the dock.

The hairs on the back of my neck stood on end and I spun, swung, and carved the wing from a chimera that hadn’t deigned to wait for the fire to fully fade. It crashed into the dock in a flailing, snarling chaos, cracking the wood and nearly upturning the boat. The edges of its wing-arm’s severed stump exuded a molten glow.

I rolled onto the dock. Red heat flared across my left arm — the thing had managed to graze me with its claws. No time to tell how bad the wound was. More screeches and more wingbeats filled the cave.

I ran to the door. As Irn Bale had promised, my new armor didn’t slow me down, the shadowy links of elf-metal like a second skin beneath my red cloak.

Something heavy landed on the dock at my side. I turned, ducked the thing’s head as it snapped at me. Their wrinkled necks could extend incredibly far, I noted. Charming.

I took the chimera’s head off with an upward swing, shouting, my weapon leaving a white-gold blur in the air. The creature fell, its headless body writhing in its death throes. More of its kin beat their wings, and I knew they’d pile on me and bring me down, their leech mouths finding the gaps in my armor as they devoured me alive.

“Alken!” Catrin was at the door, waiting for me. She had her dagger in hand, but the small weapon would be of little use against that hell swarm.

I wouldn’t make it. With a surge of will I made the aureflame aegis burn again, hoping to repel the swarm even for a moment. Most of them balked. One didn’t, its momentum carrying it forward.

The chimera hit me in the back. It was smaller than me, but dense with muscle and heavy enough. I was thrown forward through the door. I felt its claws scrabble at my back, tearing my cloak but fouling on the armor. It hissed in rage, and even as its flesh sizzled and burned at the touch of my aura it bit at my neck with its sucking mouth.

I reached back with my wounded left hand. A flash of pain erupted as the gouges near my elbow were pulled. The creature’s teeth clamped down on my vambrace. It snarled and shook its head viciously, nearly wrenching my arm from its socket. I couldn’t turn, couldn’t get its weight off my back or bring my weapon to bear.

Catrin saved me, again. Screaming in fury, she hit the thing from the side and stabbed at it with her dagger. It wasn’t undead, and the banesilver did little to hurt it more than regular steel would have, but neither was it preternatural enough for that to matter. She ripped the blade out, stabbed again, then again. Eventually she found its small brain.

The chimera went still. Catrin helped me get its weight off. As I stood, I saw she’d been covered in brackish gore. The creatures had purple, almost mossy blood. My eyes flickered to the still open doorway. More of the monsters were advancing on it.

I took a single step froward, swung, and hewed through the membranous flesh of one lamprey head as it darted through the doorway. My weapon hummed musically as it parted the air, where a normal weapon might have only whistled. I kicked the dead thing away to get it clear, then slammed the door closed and latched it. There were several heavy thuds as the creatures slammed against the barrier, but it was a siege door. It held.

Several minutes passed before either of us caught our breath.

“Alken…”

I turned. The hallway would have been pitch black, but my axe still glowed dimly to illuminate Catrin. Her brown hair was disheveled, her fine blue dress ruined with chimera blood.

Her eyes were fixed on my wounded left arm. They burned with a hungry red light.