Chapter 48: The Betrayed

Chapter 48: The Betrayed

Author's Note: This chapter is one of the darker ones to date. Probably not the darkest, but certainly top five. Reader discretion is advised.

Kelvun didn’t stop for anyone or anything as he ran up the stairs in the dark. He was in such a hurry to make it to his rooms that he didn’t even bother to find a real sword. Along the way, he briefly considered running to the nursery to fetch his infant son but decided against it because of how far away it was. He didn’t need a weapon or a child. He needed a safe place to hide until morning’s light would burn away the evil that had somehow turned up in his own home.

He idly wondered if his wife was safe and tried to remember where she’d been before the lights went out, but he couldn’t recall for the life of him. Remembering anything was impossible, with blood-curdling screams rising from the grand hall. There were closer ones too, but with the discordant symphony that the bard was still playing, he couldn’t figure out exactly how close any of that was from him.

It didn’t matter, though; nothing did. Once this was over, he could find a new wife, and he was sure he’d grow to love little Leo the Sixth almost as much as he loved Leo the Fifth. He just had to keep running; he would either stay ahead of it and get to his chapel, or he wouldn’t. He simply had to trust that the gods would protect a righteous man like him.

They did too, and as he closed and barred the door of the tiny room behind him, he was forced to admit to himself that he’d known they would the whole time.

“If there’s a silver lining in this, it’s that everyone who heard the message of that awful phantasm won’t live long enough to repeat it,” he assured himself as he lit a few of the candles in the room to try to dispel the darkness while he thought of some possible story he could spread in the wake of this event to divert the blame.This chapter's initial release occurred on the n0vell--Bjjn site.

A peasant uprising might work, he supposed, but it would make him look weak as a leader. A goblin attack would be very appropriate for the goblin’s bane, but he hadn’t seen any reports of goblins within leagues of the city in years, so no one would believe it. Perhaps he could declare it to be an assassination by Dutton agents that was only partially successful, he thought to himself, brightening slightly as he paced back and forth in the tight confines of his chapel.

“I’m sure I still have those ridiculous papers from Gelwin about those raids that were supposed to happen,” he mused. “If I were to—”

Kelvun’s words were cut off by the sound of someone pounding on the door. He raised his flimsy weapon towards the sound as he quietly backed away from it, but whatever was out there didn’t sound strong enough to get through.

“Kelvun, you unbelievable coward, open the door!” a woman that sounded an awful lot like his wife shouted.

Kelvun only stood there quietly, trying to decide if this was a trick. If it was, then the door certainly needed to stay closed, but what should he do if it wasn’t? Should he take the chance?

“Kelvun,” she shrieked again. “I know you’re in there, and I know you’ve got a secret door for when you go see your whores; now let me in before those things find me, or I swear to all the gods I’ll never stop haunting you.”

For a moment, Kelvun thought about leaving the door closed, even though the pettiness in the face of death was more proof than he ever would have needed that it was really her. If she died, she would definitely haunt him until the end of his days, he admitted grudgingly as he lifted the bar on the door. That wasn’t the reason he was letting her in, though. He was saving her because it would make him look more sympathetic.

For a moment, Kelvun experienced a wave of relief as he realized that Beatrice and Emalin were safe after all. He’d feared the worst when they’d gone missing weeks ago amidst the heat and the mobs, but now, when he needed them most, they’d come to save him. Then he realized that was impossible. Not only would they have no way to be here right now, but it would have been impossible for these two women to work together in anything.

This had to be some trick of evil, he decided as he brought his sword down as hard as he could against the creature that barred his path. “Kevvie - why would you hurt us after all we’ve been through?” Beatrice’s voice warbled in a cruel mockery of her normally sonorous tones.

The first blow bent the bejeweled ornamental blade, but that didn’t stop him. The fear and the rage boiling up inside him demanded an answer, and this was the only weapon he had. It took two more strikes to snap it off at the hilt entirely.

“It looks like my little lord’s sword gave out again,” Emalin tittered.

“Doesn’t it always, though?” The thing wearing his wife’s skin answered from behind.

The monster that was holding him laughed at that in both of her voices as it finally stepped into the light. After what the evil had done to his wife, Kelvun had steeled himself for the worse, but the result was more terrible than he could have possibly imagined. Something had killed these women and stitched together the pieces of their corpses in a way that was as asymmetric as possible, leaving him with a two-headed five-armed shambling horror. The fifth arm hinted that more than two bodies made up this monstrosity, but Kelvun tried very hard not to think about how his third mistress Annise might fit into that answer.

“Wha-what do you want with me?” he demanded of the horror as it started to smoke in place, and the remains of the holy incantations made it smolder slightly.

“I just want to be with you, Kevvie,” Beatrice answered, “Forever and ever and ever...”

“That’s right - the darkness promised us that after it was done with you, we could spend all eternity together!” Emalin agreed.

“No!” Kelvun screamed. He was trapped, but he’d be damned if he’d let them take him alive. He still had the useless hilt of his sword in his hand, but the cheap metal had fractured at an angle, leaving a few inches of steel on the hilt. He swallowed as he jabbed it toward his neck. He wasn’t sure if it would be enough to kill him quickly, but he hoped it would be. It would be better to drown in his own blood than to endure any more of this horror show.

The blow never landed, though. Inches before the steel would have buried itself in his right jugular, one of the tentacles from his wife’s puppeteer wrapped around his wrist and stopped him. “Now, now darling,” she cooed. “If you died now, you couldn’t share eternity with each other. You’ve loved making all of us scream for so long. Now it’s time to return the favor.”

Kelvun didn’t have a chance to finish wrapping his mind around that awful idea before he was dragged into the darkness by the two monstrosities. He was halfway down the winding private passage before he realized the sound he was hearing were his own screams, and they only stopped when he saw that the passage now intersected a new rough-hewn tunnel that someone had built to invade his home.

That shocked him. How had someone dug a tunnel underneath his palace without his notice? How long had this plot against him been brewing? Suddenly the memory of the moment he’d short-changed the swamp forced itself into his mind unbidden. That was when he was certain he was damned.