Sekali, "The Sister City"
Chapter 78
The company headed back, turning northward through the great tunnel; always as northward as possible. The tunnel grew in size as they silently traveled further and further into the roots of the mountain. The slope became a steady descent, with Finyat leading the way, a faint darker light giving him just enough to make the way possible.
On the seventh day, the rushing of a great water was heard up ahead. Finyat motioned the group to stay so he could scout ahead.
It was not long before he returned. When they spied out his approach, Finyat looked as if he were taking his time, unsure of his footing. As he came back among them they all noticed something was wrong; terribly wrong. Finyat was trembling and quite pale. He did not speak for some time.
Aria retrieved a small blue-glass bottle out of her pack, uncorked it and put it to Finyat’s lips, very concerned. “Sip only a few drops, no more.”
With quivering lips he took a little onto his tongue and swallowed. Within a few moments his features relaxed and the color of his face returned. All were silent, awaiting his report. Finally he sighed and swallowed hard, wiping his face as if trying desperately to awaken from a nightmare.
“Now I know why we have neither seen nor heard of any signs of life these past few days.” His teeth began to chatter as he spoke. He clenched them tightly to keep them from chattering.
Aria looked toward the sound of the water, then back at Finyat, concerned. She knelt before him and gently spoke in an even, soothing tone.
“What did you see?” Finyat shuddered openly at her question and glanced up at Sekali briefly, shaking his head as if in disbelief.
“I - I saw . . . death!” He forced the last word through tightly clenched teeth and wrapped his arms about himself.
Sekali’s mind reeled as a scene of his past ripped through his mind like a jagged blade. He staggered back from them and groaned, a tinge of red instantly clouding his vision. He saw them look at him, startled as he unsheathed his enchanted blade. He felt it then; a beckoning from the direction of the rushing waters, and he gladly heeded the call.
The last thing Sekali saw was Aria drawing her blade, saying something he could not hear, for his heart began to beat fiercely, quenching his hearing, like the drums of war, spurring an army on to war.
He found himself running toward the rushing, deafening sound of water. As he approached, he saw a suspension bridge spanning a large river with a small castle at its zenith. The waters were black with a white froth covering its surface where many jagged, black stones shot up from the waters, the many carcasses of the fallen impaled upon them. He stopped short of the bridge and looked down into the depth of the waters, which had cut down through the rock over the ages. Strewn all through the rocks lay the many that had fallen into the sickening waters, destroyed at the hand of an enemy yet unseen.
Pulling his eyes from the waters below, Sekali noticed the bridge was crafted from the very stones of the mountain itself, suspended at the center with a castle of some kind midway across it. He could see through to the other side.
Squinting, he peered into the structure, and there within its shelter, suspended in the air was the apparition of his dreaded past, cloaked in ragged, blackened, shreds of dark night. Within its fleshless grip was its scythe, as eternally black as the fiend itself.
He could hear nothing now; he could see nothing but his enemy before him, an enemy that had plagued his dreams and had taken his life from him . . . had taken away his beloved!
Sekali leapt forward in the energy of his own fear and hatred, focusing that energy for war. It would end here, now, or he would die! In silence he engaged his most terrible fear and deepest of hates.