The streets were desolate and lonely in the high quarter of the city. Dust blew in the wind, stirring up into small devils and then quickly settling again before picking up once more a few feet away. There were no sounds except for the rustling of their cloth and the sounds of their feet against the cobblestones. The ornately designed buildings were dusty and bedraggled, seeming almost to be relics of a lost age. In a way, D'Arden thought, perhaps they were.
Here and there could be seen a bloodstain – on the ground, perhaps across a doorway, or smeared on the side of a building. They were always long dried, and never fresh. He wondered how it was that there seemed to be no life here at all, and yet there clearly had been only a few months previous. He could almost imagine the children playing in the streets, mothers calling out from the houses for their precious babes and they would come running home just in time for dinner. Instead, the only sounds that seemed to echo in these streets were the cries and screams of the damned, and though he heard nothing, he could swear that the agony of death was palpable everywhere he looked.
"It's so quiet," Mikel whispered. "Where is everyone?"
"Either dead," D'Arden said in a low tone, "Or perhaps contributing to the body count. We must find where the fel beasts are hiding. This may be difficult for you, boy – I know none of the folk here, but you do. There may be faces that you recognize. Know that they are no longer the people you knew, but simply monsters wearing their image. You must cut them down quickly and decisively, because if you do not, they will feast on your flesh and dig out your eyes with their bare hands."
"How will I know who is dangerous and who is not?" Mikel said.
"Demons are clever and cunning, but fel beasts are not. They know nothing except the hunger to kill and destroy. If any one of them speaks so much as a word to you that is not a black curse or a cry of hunger, then stay your hand. Otherwise, be sure that you strike first." D'Arden kept his voice level. He could feel that the strain on the young man was beginning to take its toll on his mind.
"Can't the manna tell you where they're hiding?" Mikel asked.
D'Arden shook his head. "It's too far gone. The corruption is too great here. I cannot read the manna right now, no more than you could read information by staring directly into the sun. All it would do is cause you agony and burn your eyes so they could no longer see."
Across the street, D'Arden spotted what looked like a corpse. "Stay close, boy. Follow me and keep an eye out for anything that might be on the prowl."
Mikel nodded grimly, and they crossed together. D'Arden was right – it was the corpse of a small girl child, no more than seven winters old when she'd died. The kill was not fresh, but it was recent. No smell of decay marked the flesh, nor had it begun to swell in the light of the sun. The flesh was cold and hard, and the eyes stared sightlessly upward, as though they were unwilling to gaze upon the horrific gash that had torn open her throat and stained the pretty green dress she wore dark with her own blood. It was almost as though someone with a particularly dark sense of humor had sculpted a porcelain doll and left it lying thoughtlessly in the street, so pale was the child's graying flesh.
D'Arden stole a glance at the boy, who was staring studiously away from the body. The Arbiter guessed that Mikel had seen his fair share of death, but he understood how difficult it could be to see such a horrific fate come to a child. He reached out one hand to close the girl's eyes.
The dead girl seemed to come suddenly to life as her teeth closed on his wrist. He gave a sharp cry as the child's sharp incisors drew blood, and as he yanked his hand away, his flesh tore apart, dripping scarlet across the road and adding to the darkness on the child's dress.
"Mikel!" D'Arden shouted.
The steel blade flashed in the sunlight and connected with the child's corpse as it leapt into the air toward the Arbiter's throat. There was no spray of blood as there might have been if the blade had cut living flesh, but instead it simply cut a heavy gash at the corpse's midsection. The body no longer had the support to keep itself upright and collapsed onto the cobblestones, but still it clawed towards them even as they took a large step backwards.
"Stand back, boy," D'Arden said, holding his injured wrist close to his body. With his other hand, he collected the manna around it – dangerous, with so much corruption around – drawing the power from within him rather than from without to avoid feeding the creature further with corrupted power, and shot a bolt of azure light at the animated corpse. It let out a terrible, rasping shriek as the manna fire engulfed the body and consumed it to nothing within the space of a few seconds.
"What… what was that?" the boy gasped, staggering backwards.
"Exactly what it looked like," D'Arden said with a grimace. The pain in his wrist lanced through his body as the manna purified the corruption that remained behind from the child's teeth. "You came through with that sword, boy. I'm impressed with that swing. If you hadn't, I'm not sure I could have gotten my blade up in time, and then the beast would have been at my throat."
"But… that child…" Mikel stuttered.
"Yes, the child. The child that hasn't been a child for quite some time. Who knows how long she may have been lying there, just waiting for you or one of your companions to cross the gate and attempt to come to her aid. It's the corruption, boy. It's all around you, it's everywhere… and it spares no one from its horror."
D'Arden checked his wrist. The wound had already begun to knit itself back together, and blood no longer seeped forth from the torn flesh. The manna was in his veins, in his blood, and he could already see the little wisps of blue fire that crept along the ground from the scarlet drops that had fallen, seeking out the corrupted manna and purifying what little of it was present. He flexed the healing joint once, twice and then nodded sharply.
"It appears it may be more dangerous here than I thought," D'Arden said, reaching his hand back behind his shoulder and grasping the handle of his crystalline blade. With its characteristic rasp, it came free from its holding, the blue glow pulsing slightly as it immediately sprang to life.
Mikel stared at the crystal sword with wide eyes. "That's a manna blade. Is it dangerous?"
"Not to any but those who are cut by its edge," D'Arden answered. "It does not radiate uncontrolled power like the fonts do. Every drop of power within this blade is controlled carefully by me, and none escapes without my explicit direction."
The boy let out the breath he had been holding. "That's good."
D'Arden glanced around them in both directions. The child had been the only person on the street. Everything else was silent, desolate, lonely. He did see, though, that on the far side of the street there was a door to a richly decorated building that hung slightly ajar, revealing only darkness within.
He raised one hand to sight along it, extending one finger in a gesture of indication. "There. That is where we go next. We must determine where the demon's source of power is, and whether these folk are only his food, or whether he dwells among them, perhaps forcing them to venerate him as some sort of sick, twisted deity."
"Do demons do that often?" the boy asked.
"Perhaps too often," D'Arden said.
They crossed the street and approached the open doorway. D'Arden slowed his pace considerably once they reached within a few steps of the arch, holding out one hand behind him to indicate that his armored companion should slow his gait as well. Carefully, cautiously, he crept closer to the aperture, listening intently for any sounds that might emit from within.
Only silence issued forth.
Holding his hand out behind him once more to indicate that the boy should stay where he was, D'Arden pushed open the thick wooden door. Its hinges let out a creak so loud that it felt for a moment as if the silent world had been torn asunder.
Damn. Now, if there was anything inside, they would know for certain that he was coming. It seemed to be his luck these days.
Suddenly tiring of stealth, D'Arden shoved open the door, allowing the sapphire light from his blade to illuminate the darkened interior.
He was greeted with only more darkness.
D'Arden stepped carefully across the threshold. Sorcerers could do terrible things with the manna when they tried, and he had come to find himself extremely cautious when crossing a doorway. They could lay traps that would explode violently when triggered, and they would do it with abandon. A man who dared to use the manna, who had a will strong enough to control it without falling immediately before its grace and majesty, was a dangerous animal – and nearly always fell victim to their own corruption. Sorcerers were often in league with demons, for whatever reason. Promises of wealth, power, sometimes even of eternal dominion over the land itself… promises that were always broken, never fulfilled.
In a place this corrupted, there could be a sorcerer hiding around any corner.
What he found within was obviously once a carefully-decorated entryway to a home. Cloaks hung on the wall and there were boots piled along the floor, lying haphazardly, strewn in every direction. A layer of dust had settled upon them; they had not been used, nor even disturbed in some time. The same layer of dust covered the floor, and there were no recent footprints. This place might not have any relevance at all to the demon's whereabouts.
A sound – a low, aching moan – came from within. He immediately stopped moving, unsure if perhaps it had been made by one of the floorboards beneath his feet. When he heard it again, longer this time and slightly louder, he knew that there was someone… or something within.
He moved swiftly and smoothly across the floor, pressing his back against the wall as he reached the next doorway that would take him inside to the house proper. It was dangerous to investigate, he knew, but if the boy outside got wind that there was someone inside and he didn't properly determine whether said person was still human in this awful place or not, he would have a very small, manageable mutiny on his hands, but one that would still be quite unfortunate.
The next door was slightly open also, and D'Arden shone the light from his blade through the small opening. There was rich furniture within, all covered with the same layer of dust. That same sound, the low, sad cry issued once more from beyond the nearly closed portal. It was a sound of pain, a sound of mourning. D'Arden felt his hackles go up. It was not uncommon for a fel beast to feign death or near-death in order to lure its prey close enough so that it could reach out and feed when one approached just one step too far. The child had been one of those, and he'd seen many before. The loved ones of a man would come home to find him crying out in pain and with desperate pleas for help, and they would find themselves quickly devoured by the beast that had assumed his form.
The door creaked softly as he pushed it open.
"Who's there?" the voice groaned from within.
Two words strung together. Could there be someone truly alive in here?
As he stepped through the second doorway and came fully into the room, the blue light illuminated a scene which he could have lived for many years without seeing, and have been perfectly happy about it. A man sat in a chair, and if the description had ended there, D'Arden would have been far more pleased.
The man – if he could still be called a man – was strapped down to the chair with heavy leather bands that wrapped around each wrist and the chair's arm. His head lolled back, and his guts had been opened as though with a vise. His innards lay strewn around the room, spread about him, and wrapped around his neck, and strung up and nailed to the ceiling in such a way that it looked like some sort of gruesome spider's web. There was blood everywhere. On the walls, on the floor, the man himself was covered in it almost from head to toe. D'Arden wondered just how it was that this poor creature was still alive, and then he noticed the trails of crimson light that crept up from the ground, infusing him with just enough manna to keep him from dying completely.
It was a truly gruesome scene of torture, and it had obviously been constructed very much on purpose.
The head lolled towards him, the eyes staring blankly as the man let out another groan. "Why can't I die? Why won't I die?"
"What happened here?" D'Arden whispered.
"They… they…" it started as what seemed almost a stutter, and then became a mantra as the man simply kept repeating the word over and over again.
It had happened already. The man's consciousness was lost. He still lived, but it was not a natural life, and what might had remained of his sanity was long fled this awful place. This grisly sight might have sat here for days, or even weeks, the poor wretch's life extended artificially through a careful application of the corrupted manna – leaving him not quite alive and not quite himself, but neither exactly dead.
"The horrors," the man whispered. For a brief moment, his eyes focused on D'Arden. "Save yourself!"
That's when D'Arden discovered just who 'they' were.
From all of the rooms of the house they suddenly came, the dead pouring out of the doorways as though they were the building's life blood suddenly released by the slicing of an artery. They groaned, they cried out, they shrieked with their still-taut throats. These were nothing like the rotted and desiccated corpses that he'd fought in the crypt. These were the bodies of the recently deceased, those driven out of their bodies by the corruption that pervaded every corner of this terrible place.
He cut at them with his sword, trying to drive them back. The walking dead staggered towards him, and though every one he cut down burst into the cobalt flames of the manna fire, it seemed as though a hundred more took their place. Where they had all come from he was not sure that he could ever know, and why they had all gathered here was a mystery that he doubted he would ever solve.
He stepped backward through the doorway, swinging his sword almost wildly as he went. They followed after him in a wave of stinking, rotting flesh and swinging limbs, desperately clawing at the air before them, staring ahead with unseeing, milky white eyes that twitched and danced in their skulls.
This was madness.
This was horror.
As he stumbled backwards out of the door that led out to the sunlit streets, the dead immediately halted and began slowly retreating back into the house. Mikel stood, staring dumbfounded as he watched the corpses begin moving backwards in what seemed like one fluid motion.
“That’s…”
“Sickening?” D’Arden asked sharply. “Horrifying? Going to haunt you for the rest of your days?” He shuddered, trying to shake off the image of the man inside, his innards strewn all over the room. “You have no idea.”
“So that’s what happened to all the people…” Mikel said slowly.
“Yes, that’s where most of them are,” D’Arden said. “My intuition tells me that not all of them are in that one house. There are probably more places like this where the corruption has spread so thickly that they congregate here. I would not be surprised to discover that there was a manna font sprung up inside that house. If I could burn the whole place down, I would.”
He shook his head despairingly. “I don’t know what I can do for them. There’s too many of them in there for my sword arm to take care of it, and I’m not sure I have enough manna within me to destroy them all without recharging at least once. I could try, but it might well kill me.”
“So what do we do?” Mikel asked.
“There’s nothing we can do. Make sure none of your people come here after dark. I realize that you believe there might be someone left alive in here, but there is not. There is no one left in here that still needs your help. In fact, your captain should be closing this gate to ensure that none of these monsters get free and begin wreaking havoc on the rest of the city. Calessa Heights is lost, boy, and your family’s home might well be next if we do not find this demon and destroy it!”
His harsh words and tone obviously frightened the boy, who took a few steps backwards from him. D’Arden didn’t have time to care about the young soldier’s fragile feelings. “The only reason that you and I are still alive right now is that the sun still shines on these streets. If night had already fallen, you and I would have been devoured by that horde of walking corpses.”
“Can’t we fight them? Put them out of their misery?” Mikel asked, his voice trembling slightly.
“If I had another Arbiter here with me, I might chance it,” D’Arden said in a defeated tone. “Alone, there is no chance that I could destroy them all. I have not slept in two days, and I have already greatly overextended myself in the graveyard that your captain sent me to in order to gain access to the city’s manna fonts. It is not possible for me to destroy them all myself, and your steel would be of little use but to slow them down a few steps.”
He reached over his shoulder and slid the crystalline blade back home into its scabbard where it gave a satisfied click. He turned away from the house, trying to block out the sounds of the moaning dead that emanated now so loudly from within. “Calessa Heights is lost,” D’Arden repeated. “I do not believe the demon is residing here. There is no one who would worship him here, no one left alive to venerate him and give him more power. This is not the place that we will encounter the demon, nor is it a place to make a pointless stand. Once I destroy the demon and purify the fonts, the corpses will collapse and then the houses can be cleaned out.”
“Will anyone want to live here after something like this?” Mikel said.
“I certainly would not,” D’arden answered. “Come. We should report our findings to your Captain and have him impose an immediate full quarantine on this area. Now that we have disturbed the dead, if all entrances to this quarter are not closed off completely by nightfall, there will be many more dead in the morning.
“We should next check the font in the low quarter, where your family lives,” he continued more softly. “If the corruption is not as strong there, it is a possibility that I may be able to purify that font and give myself a base of power to work from. If I can make myself stronger, it will make the demon weaker.”
“You should rest before you do,” Mikel said. “Two days is a long time to be awake.”
“I have a room at the inn near the trader’s gate,” D’Arden said. “Perhaps you are right. It may be best to first take a repose and collect myself before attempting to purify a badly corrupted font on my own.”
“Let’s go see the captain,” the boy said.
They hastily retreated from the high quarter.