Chapter 325 - True Horror (Patreon)

The three golems stomped up the stairs ahead of Zeke, just as they had on most of the other floors. Only once they had emerged and remained unharmed would Zeke follow. As he did, he fiddled with the ring on his finger, wondering if it worked on slivers of a soul. On the one hand, he fully expected that Eveline would follow the contract they’d signed. That was the whole point of it, after all. However, he also suspected that she would use the smallest loophole to turn on him, if given half a chance.

“Yes. It works on me,” she said, floating above him. “But then again, of course I would say that, right? You have no way of knowing if it works or not unless I tell a lie and it works. And I wouldn’t be so stupid as to do something like that, would I? I’d tell nothing but the truth until the last possible moment.”

“Good to see that you’ve thought this through,” he muttered, climbing the steps. He’d been at it for hours, and cut off from the earthen energy as he was, Zeke only had his personal mana to fuel [Cambion’s Awakening]. It helped, but it wasn’t capable of soothing his fatigue nearly so well as earth attuned mana. Instead, it was better at healing issues with his mind and soul.

“Oh, that’s just off the top of my head,” she responded, waving dismissively. Then, she added, “Or was it? You have no way of knowing! Muhahaha.”

“You’re horrible.”

“I’m a demon.”

“Which you’ve taken great pains in pointing out isn’t really a judgement on what kind of a person you really are,” he said.

“No – you haven’t been listening,” she argued. “I said we didn’t start out that differently than everyone else. But after our transformation and living in this realm? We’re all selfish, a bit masochistic, and…well, I hesitate to say ‘evil’, but it really does kind of fit.”

“You really aren’t making it easy to trust you.”

“That’s the beauty of our arrangement, Ezekiel. You don’t have to trust me,” she said, trying to pat him on the head. Her hand went straight through – sending a chill down Zeke’s spine. “You have to trust your great-and-powerful Framework. It created the contract. It enforces the terms. We’re all just pawns in its little game.”

The last bit, she said with a note of disgust. That wasn’t terribly abnormal when she spoke of the Framework, and she often called it by various other derogatory names. Zeke sympathized, to a degree. But for a twist of fate, he might’ve ended up being sent to Mal’araxis instead of the Radiant Isles. Certainly, there was an argument to be made that those who would eventually become demons had earned their fate, but that argument would fall on the deaf ears of those who’d been tortured until their very nature twisted in on itself. A few decades of bad behavior didn’t earn an eternity in Hell.

No wonder she – and presumably, all demons – were a bit upset about the way things had shaken out.

“Empathy for a demon,” Eveline said, shaking her head. “Is that the corruption altering your mind? Or is it something else? You will never know.”

“I hate you sometimes,” Zeke muttered, looking up to see the top of the steps. There stood a grand set of double doors, their façade carved with fanciful whorls that were almost mesmerizing to behold. “Thank god.”

“Which one?” Eveline asked, her big eyes sparkling with what appeared to be childish mischief. “The big one? Or the little pretenders?”

“Just an expression,” he answered.

“Well, words have meaning here,” she said, casting a glance toward the stairway’s vaulted ceiling. Like the rest of the tower, it looked like what would happen if you gave a vampire with a taste for all things gothic an endless budget and the skilled workers to make its taste into a reality. “The big guy might not like his name being used so flippantly.”

Zeke sighed, saying, “I didn’t wake up this morning expecting to be cautioned against blasphemy by a literal demon, but here we are. Then again, that’s kind of par for the course, isn’t it?”

Thankfully, she only had to skim my thoughts to understand my idioms, but she’d have to delve much deeper to understand my overall point. Instead, she asked, “What do you mean?”

“My dad was probably the closest thing I ever saw to a demon on Earth,” he stated. And it was true. Even if the man’s actions had molded Zeke into the sort of person who could survive and thrive after his rebirth, the elder Blackwood had no redeeming qualities that Zeke could remember. If anyone in all the world had deserved to be sent to Hell, then his father had to be at the top of the list. “But he got strangely religious about weird stuff. He hated blasphemy.” Zeke shook his head. “He hated a lot of things, really. Most, if I’m honest. Anyone who didn’t think exactly like him…”

Zeke trailed off as he thought of the strange contradiction of a man who claimed to follow a religion built on peace and acceptance, but had somehow managed to twist it into so much hate. Perhaps demons were similar.

“Not really. We’re motivated by fear.”

“Of god?”

“Big ‘G’,” she said. “The one who made all of this. If we step too far out of line…or offend him in any way, he has the power to unmake everything.”

“So, he’s male?”

Eveline let out a dramatic huff. “Out of all of that, you latch onto gender? It’s just a convenient way to contextualize him in a way we can understand. I have no idea if he’s male, female, or some inconceivable other that none of us can hope to comprehend.”

“Point taken,” Zeke said. He focused on the door. “So, are we ready for this?”

“I’m just here for moral support,” she said. “So, you should probably ask yourself that question. But if you’re asking for my assessment, I give you a fifty-fifty shot.”

“Between living and dying?” he asked. “You’re not very good at this moral support thing.”

“Oh, you’ll probably live. I’m just not so sure you’ll make it through without tearing your human side free and tossing it aside so you can take your rightful place as a powerful demon,” she said. “Like I said. Fifty-fifty. Go get ‘em, tiger. I believe in you.”

With that, she pumped her tiny fist in the air, though it lacked any sort of excitement or urgency.

“Kind of blasé about being freed from your eternal prison,” Zeke remarked.

She shrugged her slim shoulders, then crossed her arms. “You get used to a lack of hope. Eventually.”

Zeke thought that was probably even sadder than the actual imprisonment, but he didn’t say anything. Eveline probably read his thoughts, but she was kind enough not to mention it. Instead, she allowed Zeke to focus his mind on the task at hand. Neither of them had any real idea what would await on the top floor, but given the progressive difficulty of the climb – and how close Zeke had come to losing to the unicorn – it was probably safe to assume that it wouldn’t be easy. So, Zeke needed to be in as close to peak form as he could get under the circumstances.

Taking a few deep breaths, he cracked his neck, rolled his shoulders, and stepped forward. The massive doors swung open with a loud creaking sound that echoed through a cavernous hall that reminded Zeke of nothing so much as a cathedral.

If cathedrals had been built to worship torment, terror, and torture.

The vaulted ceiling rose hundreds of feet into the air, supported by columns of naked and flayed flesh. People. Demons. Monsters. Hundreds of them, all piled atop one another until they reached the roof.

None had skin.

All were still alive and groaning in horrible agony.

Zeke felt the bile rise in the back of his throat. There were hundreds of columns, each comprised of hundreds of victims. Thousands upon thousands of people, all moaning in eternal pain.

Blood coated the floor, periodically rising in pulsating globules that glowed with ethereal crimson light. It cast the entire chamber in angry red.

“The Cathedral of Torment,” mumbled Eveline.

It was an appropriate name.

The walls were decorated with murals depicting scenes of gleeful torture that sent a shiver of fear up Zeke’s spine. His stomach constricted into a tight knot of anxiety and nausea as he forced himself to step forward. His first footfall surprised him with a disgusting squelching sound.

That’s when he bent double and vomited the contents of his stomach. The blood swallowed the refuse in an instant, but Zeke hardly noticed. Instead, he was too focused on the fact that floor seemed to have been made of flesh as well.

Somehow, though, the overall architecture remained gothic in nature. As if someone had simply replaced all the stone with meat, corpses, and tortured victims.

“It’s even more disturbing than I remember…”

“You’ve been here before?”

“I…I don’t know…the memories are scattered. I only just remembered…”

She clutched her head in either frustration or pain, but Zeke couldn’t spare the focus necessary to attend to her – even if he was capable of doing anything to help. Instead, his eyes had found the chamber’s main attraction.

In the distance was a cross, and upon that cross was a figure Zeke couldn’t quite make out. Still, he suspected that when he drew closer, he would find Eveline’s true form.

“No…it’s not me…”

“What?”

“It’s…it’s something else,” she mumbled. Then, she clutched her hands to the side of her head, and made a screamed a wordless scream of frustration before growling, “I can’t remember! I can’t remember! It’s…it’s too much! Just…I can’t….”

And then, without another word, she dissipated into motes of pure mana before fading away. Suddenly, Zeke felt very, very alone.

It wasn’t a new feeling. He’d spent more time alone than he cared to contemplate. But in the Cathedral of Torment and surrounded by so much agony, he desperately wished someone was there to share his burden, to lighten the load. Then again, it was bad enough that he had to experience it, and he wouldn’t wish such a scenario on anyone he truly cared about.

Those emotions only lasted a few seconds before Zeke pushed them aside and focused on the job at hand. After all, he’d ascended the Spear of Desolation for a reason. And now that he was so close, he could scarcely consider abandoning the agreement he’d made with Eveline. Not only was he bound by the Framework’s contract, but he felt sorry for the imprisoned demon. Perhaps that made him a fool, but seeing her pain was enough to activate some protective side of his nature. He didn’t simply need to free her; he wanted to save her.

Perhaps he hadn’t grown quite as callous as he’d thought.

Or maybe that was the purpose of all those conversations about his previous actions. Eveline was certainly calculating enough to have broached the subject of his abandonment of the Radiant Isles, hoping to steer him in the proper direction. But it didn’t matter. Not really. While it might’ve been a manipulation, the feelings were still real enough.

Resolved, Zeke stepped forward. With each footfall, the floor squelched disgustingly, and though he tried to ignore it, doing so was impossible. Still, he forged ahead, intent on doing the job he’d ascended the tower to do.

With every step, the figure on the cross came further into focus. The size suggested that it was a child, but Eveline had seemed adamant that it was not her true body on that cross. The moaning of the tormented grew louder with every passing second. Was it a warning? Were they trying to tell him to run away, lest he be added to one of the columns? Or were they, perhaps, welcoming him to the fold?

Another shudder sent a tremble up Zeke’s spine, and goosebumps erupted across his skin. Never before had he wished more fervently for real armor. Encasing himself in blood mithril might not have protected him from the eerie feelings twisting his heart, mind, and stomach into knots, but it couldn’t have hurt, either.

Finally, the figure on the cross resolved itself into an emaciated dwarf. He’d been attached to the cross by a series of gleaming spikes that started at his palms and progressed down his arms and meeting in the center of his naked torso. Then, the spikes repeated the pattern as they traced a path down his stomach and through his crossed legs to end at his feet.

As Zeke approached, he noticed that blood – thick and almost black – dripped down the cross to join the glistening pool that covered the whole floor. Had it all come from the dwarf? Or the tormented people in the pillars?

The dwarf looked up, revealing that a crown of those same, gleaming spikes had been embedded in his head.

Zeke took an inadvertent step back.

Because he recognized him. He was emaciated, and his robes had long-since crumbled to dust, leaving only a few thin strips around his waist. A black beard, streaked with white, fell down his chest. It parted around the gleaming spikes, but it still reached past his waist to end mid-thigh.

Esoteric runes had been carved into his gray skin, and they, too, glowed with ethereal light. Zeke recognized some of the glyphs, but the pattern was otherwise unknowable. Even looking at it for too long sent a spike of pain lancing through Zeke’s mind.

Chains wrapped around the dwarf’s wrists, stretching to the blood-covered floor. Zeke had seen chains like that before. In fact, he’d already broken five sets.

The dwarf’s eyes flew open, and any doubt about his identity fled before Zeke’s recognition.

Dáinn. The dwarven king’s regicidal brother. The one who’d sentenced the dwarves to an apathetic existence tainted by demonic corruption. The traitor. Zeke would never forget those eyes, so dark and full of pain and anger.

A surge of fury rose within Zeke, and he stepped forward, his hammer in hand. Already, he’d started to gather the necessary powers – his twin attunements, his Will, and his most powerful skill – to break the chains. And everything else, probably. But a moment later, his steps faltered when the dwarf spoke.

In a weak, pitiful, and pleading voice, he whispered, “Please…you must…kill…me…”