Chapter 73 - A Pit of Depression

  Slowly, quietly, Adam snuck into the cave, ready to face the Thuraum and its servants. Since he and Emily had entered the place at a relatively high point, obscured by great stones and stalagmites, he couldn’t see what was happening yet.

  Aside from the horrible noise of battle, filled with both unmistakable cries of war and the echoing whispers and screams from Caine’s memories, there was an incessant ringing. Not unlike the sound exceptionally loud noises tended to leave in Adam’s ears. Dreary grey rain splattered down on the stalagmites and muddy ground, all lit in filthy yellow light. Adam’s limbs felt heavy. Not only did his feet get sucked down into the tar-like mud, it felt like lifting them was hopeless; a futile effort doomed to accomplish nothing. Even his brown skin, which always had a warm undertone to it, seemed to be grey, dull, and ugly now.

  Yet, Adam clenched his hands into fists. Despite the horrifying beings and sights he’d undoubtedly encounter down there, he wouldn’t back down. After everything Caine had gone through, Adam had made it worse. And Adam would gladly walk through all of damnation if it meant he could make it up to his old friend and save him.

  Holding his breath, Adam peaked over one of the many boulders.

  Unlike the full-scale battle between Corrupted and Thaler Adam had seen last time, this cave held a smaller, but utterly merciless encounter between the two factions. Disturbing scenes and horrifying memories played out on the sides which Adam vehemently tried to ignore. The patterned trail they’d been following led into a tunnel different from all the others: red and strangely fleshy like an open wound. Its walls seemed to pulse in small contractions.

  Adam groaned. I should’ve known. The Thuraum had broken the connections of the existing Associations around here, causing all of them to lead to the Thuraum Node instead. Doing so, the psychological problem manifested itself more and more prominently in Caine’s mind, by making sure more and more memories were associated with it.

  Vile as that may be, a more direct problem for Adam was that they were following the trail to the Node of Utenanga Fortress. Now that it had been relayed, they needed to find a new route through the endless labyrinth of tunnels. A problem for later, I suppose.

  Hideous Corrupted crawled and stumbled over the rocky ground. Masked, grey figures dressed in rags, who howled in terror and anguish as they joined an assault on a group of Thaler. Familiar faces like Jahecca and Daeryn held off the Corrupted from behind an improvised barricade of stones and stalagmites.

  The Thaler were a peculiar people indeed. During battles in the outside world, he’d seen many human soldiers cry. Often for their mother. He’d seen people frozen in shock, or scrambling on the ground, searching for their own severed limbs. Not the Thaler. None of their Caine-like eyes widened in fear or shifted for a chance to run. Young Akao, who seemed to be just thirteen years old, ducked to avoid the malformed claws of a Corrupted and broke them with one swing of her staff. The next Corrupted lashed out to grab her hair, but Daeryn ended the attacker by slinging a pellet right between its eyes.

  The little colour Emily’s face used to have had faded away when she strode up to Adam. “Well, joining the party down there sure sounds like the safest way to get some Origin…” she whispered.

  “Oh definitely, no way beating up a trauma itself can go wrong, right?” Adam asked, trying to keep the tension out of his voice as he rubbed his scars. “We could escape, of course, but…”

  “What’s the point if everything is falling apart, eh?” Emily chuckled humourlessly. “No, we need a new strategy. How about, instead of trying to ‘borrow’ from the Thaler, we’ll work with them? ‘The enemy of my enemy is my friend’, and all?”

  Adam nodded slowly. He imagined the vast amount of intel the Thaler had: Reminiscence, what’s going in the outside world, and Caine’s knowledge about his child… “Doubt they’ll be happy to see us though.”

  “Well, words and blabla mean little if they’re not backed up by actions.” She hit the palm of her hand with a fist. “We should show them we care for Caine and are on their side by fighting on their side!”

  Adam raised an eyebrow. “Sounds mighty confident. Or are you just sick of waiting for the right moment again?”

  There was a twinkle in her eyes before she stuck out her tongue at him. “Bit of both, maybe. Let’s sneak in and take down the leaders and most powerful goons first to tip the scale in favour of the Thaler?”

  He held out his fist, which she bumped with hers. Then, by unspoken agreement, they lowered themselves into a crouch and slowly, carefully, made their way into the cave. They both picked their own path between the rocks and stalagmites to sneak towards their enemies. Carefully avoiding the mud or loose gravel with his feet, he made as little sound as possible. He didn’t know a lot about the Corrupted, but the Roots used to have an exquisitely fine hearing, and both were adjusted forms of the Thalers.

  Well, all the madness in here has one advantage at least; it will be a lot harder to hear me over this racket. Adam bitterly glanced at the scenes and memories he walked past.

  He saw Eric lying on the ground in a foetal position, while apparitions of soldiers from the Royal Army came for him from all directions. Caine desperately did all he could to protect his son, casting Invocations left and right to chase the ghostly shapes away. Adam’s heart sank when he saw Eric’s red-rimmed eyes. “It’s your fault they’re after me,” Eric said, his words forming an unnatural contrast with his high child’s voice. “If you had stayed loyal to the Starwing Order, I would be safe. All of this is your fault.”

  Adam ripped his gaze away, trying to find an appropriate target. In the centre of the room stood a figure that sent shivers down Adam’s spine. Surrounded by the ghostly shapes of laughing people, the man stood alone. His bare upper body, scarred and horribly pale, was splattered by rain. A disturbing shadow, shaped like a humanoid figure, grew out of his back. As the pale figure tried to talk with the people beside him, the shadow bent over him and used its long fingers to pull at the corners of the man’s mouth to form a smile. The shadow gripped the pale figure’s jaw and moved it up and down to make him say ‘I’m fine, how are you?’

  Stolen from its rightful place, this narrative is not meant to be on Amazon; report any sightings.

  Adam looked away from the illusion, and the awfully recognisable feeling. Not too far from him, two Corrupted climbed up rocky slopes towards the Thalers.

  Although the duo was heavily armed compared to the rags-wearing foot soldiers, they wore the same pale masks as all of them; a waxy depiction of a wide, disturbing smile, with fingers of shadow pulling at the mouth’s corners. Although the metal of their armour was filthy, it seemed awfully durable and sophisticated. Their pauldrons were even forged into the shapes of crying faces.

  Adam followed the duo as quietly as possible.

  Soon, the armoured Corrupted had reached a plateau that overlooked the Thaler’s barricaded enclosure. In what Adam recognised as an Invocation from Worhaelis, the left warrior breathed out a stream of smoke. Inside, shapes appeared of tormented faces which soundlessly howled in agony. Through unknown means, the Corrupted reshaped the cloud into a grey, smoky net in which sentences like ‘I’m worthless’ and ‘there’s no way out’ were interwoven. Adam shivered. Although it made sense that multiple kinds of Invocations existed that were based on the sadness and loss of Worhaelis, it was the first time he saw an example.

  With a hissing shriek, the Corrupted threw its net, trapping two horrified Thalers and pushing them down to the ground. Judging by how desperately the Thalers struggled against it, the Invocation of self-doubt and hopelessness was exceedingly heavy. The other Corrupted took a deep breath, while other astonished Thalers heaved their weapons to prepare for another attack from the clearly unexpected angle.

  The Corrupted moved to prepare for his Invocation, but Adam had snuck up on him from behind. He yanked the Corrupted’s masked head aside with one hand. With the other, he jammed his knife into the monster’s neck, in the narrow opening between plates of rusty armour.

  Quick as lightning, the other Corrupted grabbed his heavy, two-handed mace and swung it sideways. Adam reflexively jumped back, causing only the first Corrupted to be hit. The mace-wielding warrior mercilessly kicked his twitching comrade out of the way and stepped towards Adam.

  Adam held his dagger in a white-knuckled grip, as he prepared for his disturbing opponent’s next move. Curiously, even though he most certainly was in mortal danger, he couldn’t feel any heat from his left heart. The bitter emotions that radiated from Caine’s depression were so strong that they seemed to hinder Adam from connecting with his left heart. He frowned. No Invocations, then. Guess we’ll have to finish this the old-fashioned way.

  The masked Corrupted in front of him seemed to have been an old male Thaler, once, judging from the white beard that stuck out from beneath his mask. He screamed with a hollow and inhuman voice as if there was nothing but sorrow inside the rusted armour. The familiar cloud of a Worhaelis he exhaled wrapped itself around the end of his savage, two-handed mace.

  Ah, lovely. So that spiked hunk of metal wasn’t dangerous enough already. Adam cracked his neck. Bending his knees and balancing on the balls of his feet, he was ready to dodge. After all, against an opponent armed and armoured as well as this, he had no choice but to rely on agility.

  Quicker than he looked, the Corrupted stepped in and jabbed his mace forward. Expecting a swing, Adam hastily stepped back. Grunting in the effort, the Corrupted followed up with a sideways kick. Adam deftly jumped aside and rolled away. Normally, he’d try to quickly stab or cut his opponent in a situation like this. However, rusty as the Corrupted’s plated armour may be, Adam judged it all too effective in blocking his self-made weapon.

  As the heavy mace came down, Adam’s hopes of disarming his opponent were crushed just like the floor the weapon smashed into. The smoke, with its biting effect reminding of acidity, enveloped the weapon way too well for Adam to have any chance of grabbing it. Oddly enough, the mace and the Corrupted himself weren’t damaged by it, in contrast to the floor and stone he managed to hit.

  Might be a useful trick to learn at some point. Searching for an opening, Adam dashed aside to position himself in front of a towering stalagmite. When the Corrupted swung his weapon horizontally, Adam ducked, causing the mace to smash the rock apart and send shards of stone flying.

  As the small delay was all the chance he’d get, Adam stepped in. Growling like a beast, he punched the Corrupted’s mask with a metallic ‘thunk.’ It was tougher than it looked, though, and the dent his punch had left was rather disappointing.

  Seemingly unimpressed, the Corrupted wasted no time. He hit Adam in the face with a backhanded swing of his gauntlet, causing Adam to stumble back. The mace came down again, but Adam stepped aside and kicked the Corrupted’s thinly armoured knee from the side. The Corrupted grunted; the joint buckled, causing the warrior to land with one knee on the ground. He tried to punch, but Adam deftly stepped aside, grabbed the arm and pressed it against the Corrupted’s own back. Holding his arm-lock tight, Adam grabbed hold of the Corrupted’s mask and smashed it into the remains of the stalagmite.

  With an unexpected burst of strength, the Corrupted pushed off from the stone column; the metal pauldron hit Adam full in the chin, making his head snap back. The Corrupted growled as he freed his arm, stood up, and spun around to face Adam.

  However, this manoeuvre took quite a bit of time. And Adam thought it would be rather impolite to let such a fine opportunity go to waste when it was handed to him on a silver platter.

  Finally having the time to attack with all his strength, Adam roared and stepped in for a sideways kick. His knee hit the Corrupted’s mask with a loud ‘clunk,’ leaving a huge dent in the tortured metal.

  The warrior stumbled back, clearly unable to see and having lost his mace. However, he grabbed a long knife from his belt and wildly slashed around him, dangerously close to the stone edge of the plateau they fought on.

  An elderly female Thaler, down in the barricaded enclosure, watched the flailing warrior and quickly locked eyes with Adam. From her suit of armour—made of intricately carved wood—Adam suspected she was one of the leaders. Despite the twitch beneath her eyes upon seeing Adam, and the hateful narrowing of her severely scarred eyebrows, Adam thought he saw a hint of understanding. That they were in fact fighting on the same side. Since assistance from the Thalers could prove crucial, he sincerely hoped she did, at least.

  Adam carefully snuck closer to the Corrupted, who screamed as he swung his knife wildly about. Right after a diagonal cut, Adam rushed in from behind the warrior. He jumped up sideways and kicked the Corrupted’s backplate with both his legs extended. With a shocked gasp, the Corrupted keeled over and tumbled down the rocky slope. He rolled over stones and stalagmites and finally landed with a sound not too dissimilar from a pile of dropped pots and pans.

  The armoured Thaler stepped in, swung her gnarled staff in an overhead arch and finished the Corrupted off with a single, devastating blow. She looked up at Adam again and nodded stiffly.

  Adam kept his face blank and nodded back. Don’t make me regret that.

  Adam gasped when he wanted to move; both his feet were stuck to the ground. All around him, a throng of tiny, misshapen figures crawled over each other to hold Adam’s boots down.