The Land: Catacombs (Chaos Seeds Book 4) (34 page)

The construct screamed and beat its wings, but it couldn’t get into the air with his death lock on its leg.  Then it looked down at him and slammed its metal head into his tender organic one.  It took care not to pierce his flesh with its wicked beak, but his head was still compressed between the hard ground and the mace-like blow.  It was too much.  He became dazed and his grip released.  The eagle shot into the air with a cry, chasing after Alma, and Richter was left bleeding and helpless on the ground.  Through his stupor, he thought he heard, “Ooooooh, you know that had to hurt!”

He came to a few seconds later and immediately reached into his Bag and pulled out a healing potion.  Richter yanked the stopper out with his teeth and downed the red solution in one go.  It immediately started repairing the internal tissue damage, but could only do so much with his ribs still out of position.  Still, it helped relieve some of the horrible pain he was feeling.  He heard a mechanical attack cry above him and knew he had to work faster.  Alma needed his help. 

Still on his back, Richter dual cast
Slow Heal I
and golden light surrounded his hands.  Blood flecked his lips as he spoke the word of Power, but he managed to complete the casting.  Healing magic worked with the potion, and he was able to stand again.  He looked around to see his enemy leaning against a bedpost, looking up and clapping.  The ladies were… otherwise occupied with one another.  Richter followed the ebony giant’s gaze and his heart dropped.

Alma was frantically weaving through the air, trying to avoid the horrible claws of the eagle.  She wove and dodged the aerial hunter, which was at least four times her size.  If it wasn’t for the speed differential that
Slow I
and
Haste I
had provided, it was clear she would have already been killed.  As it was, Richter was pained to see that red blood fell as she frantically tried to evade death.  A gash marred her beautiful dusky scales. 

Richter was about to pull his bow from his Bag, when Nexus looked over with an easy smile.  His voice was cultured again. “Oh you’re back up.  Good!  I think I’ll take one of your eyes!” 

The giant rushed at Richter, each large stride devouring the distance between them.  Richter had time for one move.  Praying it would work, he flexed his legs and jumped away.  Nexus reached for him, but before Richter fell to the ground, he finished the casting he had started before he moved.  A beam of green energy shot from both of his hands.  The dual casted
Paralysis Beam I
was twice as thick as what had resulted from his previous castings.  It struck Nexus in the chest as his black hand was extended towards Richter.  A horrible smile froze on his face as the spell took effect, the pearl whiteness of his teeth contrasting with skin the color of midnight.

Richter hit the ground in a roll.  He only had four seconds before the giant was back on him, and he couldn’t waste it.  He kept an internal count.
One
!

*
Alma!  Fly to me!
*

The dragonling banked again and avoided the awful talons of the construct by a hair’s breadth.  She immediately dove towards Richter, the construct just behind.  As soon as he was on his feet again, Richter set his feet wove his fingers in a furious spellcasting. 
Two
!

There was no cleverness to Alma’s flight now, just pure speed.  The aerodynamics of her dracanoid body couldn’t match the artificially streamlined body of the mechanical eagle, though.  The distance between her and the eagle decreased by the millisecond, but she trusted her master and would do as he had bid.  Power crackled between his hands as she dove straight towards him, then she heard his voice again, *
Drop!
*

Richter channeled the energies of his spell.  The dual casting that had given him such problems in the past now flowed easily and almost without thought.  Independent of any conscious decision, both of his hands had half bent into claws and then came together until they were almost touching.  He called out a frantic mental warning to Alma, and two sparks of light appeared in the cage his hands made. 
THREE
!

The sparks combined and formed a brilliant arc of white lightning, much brighter than any other he had ever created.  The crackling bolt shot towards the space Alma had just vacated.  His aim was true and the lightning sped across the distance to the eagle in a time span measured in milliseconds.  The electrical attack impacted against the large bird, and the energy overloaded whatever internal process gave it flight.  Its wings locked into place and it plummeted to the ground.  When it struck, it was with a horrible clanging crash.  The bird was only ten feet away from him.  Richter finished his count with satisfaction.
Four
.

He reached for his sword.  His hand grasped the hilt, but before he could draw it free, a hand grasped his shoulder and spun him around.  A large black fist crashed into his face and his body flew through the air.  Teeth and blood filled the back of his throat, and the vertebrae of his neck ground together as they struggled to protect the delicate spaghetti of his spinal cord.  He lost consciousness before he even struck the ground. 

Alma cried out in her own mind.  For the first time, her anger drove her to connect to a mind other than her master’s. *
Leave him alone!
*  A yellow glow enveloped her body again and lightning shot towards the giant.  Nexus just smiled that same arrogant grin. 

As soon as light began to surround Alma, the giant raised his hand.  A disc of crystalline light appeared and the lightning bolt was drawn to it.  The disc absorbed the energy and then with a pulse, fired it back to the dragonling.  Alma was struck in the head by her own spell and collapsed just as the eagle had.  The bones of one of her wings snapped, and the gash in her side widened, blood pulsing out onto the ground.  Nexus tutted at her and cast another spell.  A cage of purple light appeared over the dragonling, both keeping her constrained and draining her mana and stamina.  He started walking towards Richter, but then paused and looked at the familiar.  After a moment’s thought, he cast another short spell and gold light surrounded his fingers briefly before winking out again.  Alma’s breathing eased as her wing straightened and her wound closed.  The black giant didn’t spare her another look.  The eagle stirred while Nexus stalked towards Richter.

Richter had hit the ground hard.  Pain woke him back up, but this time, the damage was too severe for him to recover.  His left shoulder had snapped out of joint and some nerve damage must have resulted, because he couldn’t move that arm at all.  He turned his head to spit out the teeth and blood filling his mouth and then raggedly gasped for air.  His face was a ruin and every breath was an agony as bone shards were driven deeper into his lungs.  Richter tried to weave his fingers into a healing pattern, but he couldn’t recover enough air to breathe out the word of Power.  Nonetheless, he tried until a black foot stomped down cruelly on his hand, snapping the bones.  Richter cried out, blood spattering weakly from his ruined mouth, as he saw Nexus’s leering face look down at him.  The eagle flew into view, slowly circling above them. 

“How do you think the fight’s going?” Nexus asked in the smooth, cultured voice that he had first spoken in.  “Personally, I think everything is going swimmingly.”

Richter glared up at the giant.  Tears leaked out of his eyes, bringing shame to his heart, but the pain skyrocketed as Nexus pressed down harder on his ruined hand.  Richter screamed again.  The giant smiled and said, “Maybe we got off on the wrong foot.  Foot, do you get it?”  Nexus ground his heel down and Richter screamed until he started choking on his blood again.  “Good!  You do get it.  As I was saying, we can stop all of this.  It’s not necessary.  I can send you home and you can forget all about the fact that I just made you my bitch.  I won’t even kill that flying rat you seem so fond of.  Now how does that sound?”

The eagle landed next to him and drove its sharp beak into his shoulder.  Richter squirmed and screamed, but couldn’t move anywhere.  Nexus started speaking again. “Come on.  You don’t really need to be here.  Let it go.  All you need to say is, ‘I relinquish my Profession.’  Just four simple words.  I mean is it really worth more of this?”  Nexus whistled again and the eagle tore off a chunk of Richter’s shoulder, leaving a bloody hole that drained his blood onto the rocky ground.  He passed out again. 

Nexus twisted his foot, and Richter came back with a sob.  Sweat from his forehead stung his eyes and mixed with his tears.  Alma revived and cried out to him psychically, but the cage she was in made her too weak to even move, let alone aid him.  She almost immediately sunk back into a spell-imposed stupor.  Richter looked up again and saw Nexus arch an eyebrow at him, silently asking, “Well?”

Richter closed his eyes and mumbled his reply.

“What was that, old boy?” Nexus asked. 

Richter coughed weakly and strained to get his limbs free, but still couldn’t.  He spoke again, his words weak and garbled by the blood in his mouth. 

Nexus sighed and went down on one knee.  Richter almost passed out from relief when the pressure was relieved from his hand.  The giant spoke softly. “Come on.  I just have to hear you say the words and this is all over.”  He forcefully grabbed the hair on top of Richter’s head and pulled the chaos seed’s face towards his own. “So what do you say?”

Richter looked Nexus in the eye and opened his mouth again.  He inhaled and then spit a large glob of congealed blood into the man’s perfectly sculpted face.  Richter began to laugh maniacally, both at his own audacity and in fearful denial of the retribution that he knew was to come as the bloody spittle oozed down Nexus’s cheek. 

Nexus just continued to hold Richter by the hair as the spittle slowly oozed down his face.  Then he shook his head slightly and said almost sympathetically, “Oh lad.  You shouldn’t have done that.”  As Nexus started to torture him, Richter learned the truth of that statement. 

The black giant hurt him again and again.  Richter tried distributing his unused attribute points in a bid to get strong enough to defeat his tormentor, but for the first time he couldn’t access his personal interface.  Nexus smiled sadistically at him when he tried.  With what had become a familiar
tsk, tsk, tsk,
he rained blows into Richter’s face until the chaos seed passed out.

Throughout the brutality, Nexus kept him just short of death, healing him when necessary.  Intermixed with the torture, the giant kept up a running train of verbal abuse and questions. “Do you give up?  Who do you think you are coming here?  I’m not your enemy, you are!  No one is going to help you.  Why don’t you help yourself?”  Richter wasn’t allowed to sleep and for some reason didn’t need to eat or drink.  His world became only pain as layer by layer, his personality was stripped away to lay bare the core of what he was. 

After what felt like days of brutality, Richter was limp.  The only reason he was not lying in a heap on the ground was that he was held upright by glowing magical bands surrounding his chest.  His feet were a few inches off of the floor.  He had learned that this was one of Nexus’s favorite spells.  It made escape impossible and left his body accessible for any torments that the giant could devise.  Richter had tried to fight back several times, and each time it had triggered an even worse round of retribution.  Nexus had just finished his latest attempt to break Richter’s will—dripping acid, which would burrow its way straight through him, all over his body—when the giant finally said something different. 

“Maybe we can come to a deal.  I’m actually getting tired of cutting and burning you.  So how about this.  You don’t actually need to say the words.  Just give me… the most valuable thing in that Bag of yours.  We will take that to be your acceptance of the inevitability of your situation.  What did your people always say?  The definition of insanity is doing the same thing over and over and expecting a different result.  All that is going to happen if you stay here is I will keep hurting you.  I will hurt you until the stars burn out.  Time moves differently in this place.  I’m not making idle threats.  I will break your mind until all that is left is a drooling ruin of who you used to be.  Or”—Nexus’s face softened and his tone grew convincingly kind—“you can be reasonable, be logical, and help yourself.”

Richter looked at the giant.  The finality in Nexus’s voice when he said he would keep hurting him had been terrifying.  He believed that the giant would break his mind.  He was already balancing on the edge of a precipice.  If he had to endure much more, Richter felt like he might snap.  He had come to hate the beautiful black face and golden hair of his tormentor, a face that often wore a sadistic smile. 

Now though, Nexus’s face was a study of compassion.  Richter knew he couldn’t trust him, but he wanted to believe that Nexus was telling him the truth.  That everything would be okay if he just gave in.  A deep part of him
needed
to believe that.  It begged and pleaded to just be released from this hell.  It was willing to give anything to just stop the pain and degradation.

A deeper part of himself, though, stood fast.  If it was only his own wellbeing that was at stake, he would have succumbed long ago.  Each time he got close, though, he thought about his people.  He thought about Petal, who had died because of his foolishness and pride.  He thought about Sedrin, who had been mauled because Richter hadn’t been strong enough to protect him.  He thought about the upcoming battle with the bugbears and other enemies that would inevitably come to find them.  Richter knew that whatever suffering he experienced now would be nothing compared to the anguish he would feel if he gave up and his people suffered because of it.