Sworded Tales

I recently edited a scene from an old PBEM game in which I participated, Black Moon Rising, and I enjoyed the rereading of it so much, that I wanted to include it here.  My character, Rillo, you may recall from an earlier post.  The character of Dunrik and the scene itself were crafted by another player and the GM for the game, so the imagining is not all mine.  Enjoy the collaborative effort!

Shining Horror

Rillo and Dunrik are stationed outside the wooden door, one eye each upon the closed solid portals, the other upon the approaches to their quiet and shadowy enclave.  Silence has descended upon the pair of sentinels as they await their companion’s return.

Rillo hears it several minutes after the group had left the room.  What it is he cannot determine, but definitely it came from the evil room and definitely, without a doubt, he hears something.

A glance at Dunrik; the stocky warrior gives no hint that he has heard anything.

Rillo slips toward the corner leading to the evil doorway once again.  He pauses there, head cocked.  Then waving an arm to get Dunrik’s attention, the Halfling points to himself, points to his ear and then points down the hallway.  The message ‘I’ ‘heard’ ‘something’ conveys easily enough.  One finger plucks across his lips as Rillo listens and ponders possibilities.  Then motioning for the Dwarf to remain silent, he begins creeping down the hall toward the double doors.

There is no rush, and he pauses to listen once more half way down the hallway.  Without hearing reason to stop, Rillo continues on to the doorway and listens carefully for anything that might offer some insight.

Dunrik had been paying particular attention to his end of the hallway and listening to the group’s departure.  He settled into his guard duty with practiced ease remaining at his post but changing his view regularly, taking note of as much as he could.  Boredom often was the death knell of a guard as they became complacent and inevitably missed something.  That is why the dwarf is very surprised when Rillo motions to get his attention.  As Rillo signs that he heard something, Dunrik nods curtly and  draws up his weapon closer, ready to support the Halfling should something emerge from the double doors.  He still glances back down his hallway but more of his attention is focused on the Halfling and the mysterious double doors.

Silence can be deafening. So the saying goes. The glass construct of mute nothing can, in an instant, shatter into a million shards of action, confusion and death. Or it can remain so, noiseless and still. A calm quiet that remains stable and unchanging. Thus were the two paths that stood at Rillo’s feet as he steps to the door. Rillo’s keen ears listen hard, a pinch of his brow demonstrating the effort to pick out nothing from silence.

Had he heard something? He was sure that he had; the sound had been unmistakable, unrecognizable as a note from a source he could pinpoint with complete accuracy, but a sound it had been. He was sure.

Moments passed into seconds that became almost a minute. The sound of silence roared in his ears.

Still nothing.

Maybe he had indeed imagined the sound.

And then the handle of one of the doors rattled, turned slightly, stopped, paused, continued.

Dunrik’s vision is crystalline in this light, and Rillo knows it.  The Halfling slips sideways for a moment, recoiling from the door far enough that the Dwarf could spy the handle moving of its own accord.  As understandable as Rillo’s movement away from some long dead horror trying to open the door is, Dunrik has an equal challenge in grasping why the Halfling has stopped his instinctual retreat.

A moment too late, Dunrik realizes the diminutive figure’s intent, but Rillo has already made his choice.  However unwise it may be.

Two small hands reach out and latch onto the weathered door handle as subtly as possible in an attempt to prevent it from completing its mechanical function.  Synapses firing into nauseating overdrive, Rillo’s lips press together to stifle a scream, but he is fully prepared to slip one hand to the other handle if it too starts to turn.

Time seems to slow down as Dunrik realizes that Rillo plans to try to prevent the door from being opened.  He starts to move forward to provide support now that cautioun has all but been abandoned.  Stopping, realizing his armour will make noise, he stands firm in his position, face fixed with a grimace.  Waiting…..waiting for the inevitable.

Like a fish freshly landed the handle wriggles within Rillo’s grasp.  And as he had supposed, the other handle begins to turn also; like a flash the Halfling’s second hand grasps the second latch.

The handles fick and rattle beneath Rillo’s grasp.  He has the measure of whomever, or whatever, is on the other side.  For the moment.  But for how long?

Frustrated grunts and noises, of effort and industry, can be heard on the other side of the door.  For the first time the sounds carry to Dunrik’s ears.  They sound cold, soulless.

Dunrik’s eyes widen as the door handles begin to rattle with more insistence.  Torn between immediately assisting Rillo and going to call the others he makes his decision. Running as fast as he can he heads to the end of the hallway to the door leading to the outside.

The wreck becomes his enemy, a willing combatant in his flight.  The canted deck throws his balance askew, albeit that he is short stocky and well-suited to retaining his balance in just such circumstances.  Several stumbles that throw him to the wooden deck are ample evidence of the awkwardness of moving too quickly upon a surface apart from the norm.

But make it to the end of the corridor he does, eventually, quickly, and throwing open the door to the main deck, that gravity has sealed shut, he steps out and yells, “WE’RE IN TROUBLE!  WHATEVER IT IS WANTS OUT!!”

Not stopping to listen for a reply, the Dwarf huffs and puffs his way back down to the hallway, axe at the ready; prepared to take on whatever evil lies on the other side of the door.

Rillo hears Dunrik’s call as it echoes down the passage-way, followed by the awkward stumping of the dwarf’s footfalls upon the wooden floor.

Moments turn into minutes as Rillo’s adrenalin courses and thoughts race through his mind.

‘Physical touch, physical barrier, at least it isn’t spectral.  Others alerted, time to choose the battleground.  Stupid grabbing these handles, an undead could smell him or feel his body heat.  Never seen Dunrik move that fast.  Dead have no weak spots, aim to immobilize.  Boy I could go for some walnuts.  Brace the handles with my shortsword, no, turning handles wouldn’t hold it.  Corridors, flanking.  On deck, daylight.’

Rillo’s head snaps around as Dunrik returns, and he calls to the Dwarf, “Back t’ the intersection or out t’ daylight, choose!  I’ll be right behind you!”

The Halfling leans his meager weight backward against the pull of the doors and buys the party as much time as he is able.  When he feels that the tug of war is nearly lost, he will try to utterly let go, hoping to send the creature, ‘Or -one- of the creatures’, his mind interjects darkly, sprawling with the dramatic shift in forces.  He will use his own momentum to fuel a hasty retreat to either the opposite side of the t-intersection or out to the main deck, wherever Dunrik has chosen to make a stand.

Suddenly the handles go silent beneath Rillo’s hands.  Everything is once more quite save for the pounding of his heart in his ears.

And Rillo is alone in the short shadowy corridor.  Until a small rush of moving air behind him, picked up by his keen ears, gives him cause to turn and look behind.

A figure, dressed in chain, black-bearded, with a dark pallor and the greyest eyes he has ever seen, the deadest eyes he has ever seen, eyes that look upon his lifed body with the uncontrolled desire and loathing the dead have for the living, stands there.

The figure flashes a swipe at Rillo; a dark-coloured rod its weapon.  Rillo ducks, and the swing misses, but he is not quick enough to avoid a second one that catches him across a shoulder to send him sprawling to the floor, bundled into a corner.

Dead, grey eyes look down at the prostrate Halfling.

Stumping sounds loud in the corridor; Dunrik’s approaching return.

The head of the looming figure turns at his approach, looking back over its shoulder.

Awkwardly stamping his way back through the gloomy corridors, the light of the sun that washes through the door to the main deck fading with every step, he turns into the short corridor that leads in the closed double doors.  And immediately pulls up short.

Standing in front of him, looming over a stricken Rillo, is a figure, a couple of inches short of six feet.  The body faces Rillo, but the head is turned in his direction.  The man is dressed in chain, black-bearded, with a dark pallor; the visage has the greyest eyes he has ever seen, the deadest eyes he has ever seen.

This he notes first.

He immediately also sees that the double doors are closed, still.  Odd.

As Dunrik stumbles his way back around the corner, registering the other figure, he stops only for a second before he charges forward, using the tilt of the boat to pick up steam and slamming into the figure standing over Rillo.

Grasping his axe and setting his shield the Dwarven fighter leaps forward. Fortunately he holds his balance upon the sloped deck, aiming his stocky body in the direction of the stranger; acutely aware of how likely the chances are he will lose his footing on the canted deck, he is unable to raise a full head of steam. Nevertheless he sets his severely gathered red eyebrows towards Rillo’s assailant and accelerates as best he can.

The grey dark-haired man is fast, lightning fast, a swing of his rod-weapon, another. The second one connects with a sickening crunch, enough of a thwack upon Dunrik’s body in fact, that his attempt to charge into the creature and send him flying back through the door, is stopped dead; he staggers back several steps, the breath momentarily beat from his lungs.

The dead-eyed man turns back towards Rillo, looking down upon the Halfling.

“I have waited long for the likes of you and your many friends,” the man says. The voice is hollow, empty, like a whisper that travels across a great chamber and from afar. “There are not many that pass this way. If any. You are the first and you have that which I crave. Life…”

The last is spoken with, if the dead can possess such a thing, pure desire.

The undead man’s shadowed eyes, which sit within a countenance that at one time probably belonged to that of a warrior noble, perhaps even benign, when he once lived, glance down upon the rod that he carries. His free hand reaches out and touches a point upon the black shaft, and he mutters a word, “Fea.”

Instantly a wave of utter fear washes over Rillo, his thought only to escape the apparition that looms above him. Somehow.

The hurk of emotion which escapes Rillo is wrenching, as he stares up, wide-eyed at the ebon figure.  One arm is clutched across his torso, grasping the wounded shoulder, but the agony etched on the Halfling’s face does not originate with physical pain.

“No, Dinor, no,” beseeching tones cast upon the soulless creature, “I tried to warn them.  I tried…”

Hiccuping, crushing waves of despair drive Rillo backwards into the unyielding wood of the corridor.  His head snaps back and forth looking for a means to flee, and he settles on the nearest available option rather than trying to bypass the horror both before and within him.  His good hand yanks one of the double door handles downward, and he crashes into the room beyond.

Wailing all the while, Rillo leaves the door to flap as it will and disappears into the darkness beyond searching for a nook, or cubby, or container in which to sequester himself.

The room is dim, gloomy, even darker than the corridor outside.  He saw everything, yet nothing.  The windows that would have lined this room, once containing stained glass no doubt, are covered with sail cloth.  Likewise any other structural damage caused by the disaster that befell the ship has been blocked, either with wood or more of the sail cloth, plunging the inside of the room into darkness.  Not the complete absence of light, such as would occur at night, but dim shadows that blanket the room.

Nevertheless, Rillo’s fear-filled scan of the room plucks out plenty of places where a small unremarkable individual could curl up and retreat from prying eyes.  A pile of collapsed timbers off to his right catch his eye; in an instant he has let his feet carry him to their comforting crannies and nooks.

Spots of light flash in Dunrik’s vision as the rod smashes into him with a sickening crunch.  Blood is pounding in his ears as he tries to clear his vision.  Wiping blood from the corner of his mouth, the Dwarf resets his shield and weapon and says, “You say you want life don’t waste yer time on the Halfling.  Everyone knows Dwarves be much tastier.”

As he takes up a defensive stance he says, “What happened to you anyway? Surely you weren’t always sitting in a dark room on a busted up ship?”

The figure turns towards Dunrik, dead grey eyes penetrating the Dwarf as he recovers his breath.

“And you.  Life.  You flaunt it like some flighty woman.  But suffer you shall.  When I have had my fill of the Halfling.”

Once more, the figure, a darkness seeming to twist about its form, or maybe imagination got the better of the Dwarf’s senses, touch the rod and muttered the word ‘Fea’.

A wave of fear sweeps over Dunrik, reaching down to his soul.  A desperate urge to flee the apparition that stands before him is overwhelming, and he succumbs to it, turning upon his heel, and running, stumbling, scrabbling, he disappears down the corridor, back towards the light, towards safety, away from the figure.

Reaching the first bend in the corridor he all but crashes into the first of his companions that rush their awkward opposite way.

‘Where is he?  Is that singing?  By the gods, that’s Milton!’ Rillo’s mind races as his brain switches gears dramatically once more.  Despite his best efforts, he can’t contain it.  The emotional stew within Rillo boils over.  The words which erupt from him are near to cackling, his tone laced with hysteria.

“Come on you black hearted menace!” he shouts with glee, “My granna hit harder than that!  And she never SPARED THE ROD!!!”

Rillo does cackle with laughter now as he searches for a new hiding place along the outer wall.  Dagger poised in hand, the wee Halfling waits wide-eyed for the other half of this game of hide and seek.

The dark figure’s head turns in the direction of Rillo’s voice.  Is it imagination?  Is it a trick of the darkness that engulfs the room upon his eyes?  The figure seems to grow stronger in this darkness, as if its home was blackness, not light, shadow rather than radiance.  “Your friends come,” it says, the hollow dead tones wafting through the dark room.  “That serves both our purposes.”

Rillo slips from his cloistered hole amongst the timbers and slips along the wall, forced further into the room.  A small pile of debris his next destination.  Encouragement floats through him as the creature continues to move towards the former source of his voice, and not where that source had flitted to.

Still he is uncomfortably close to the shadowed figure as it pauses near the fallen timbers.

“You cannot hide from me forever,” it says, mocking the small man.  “And your presence brings more prey to my lair…”