Melee in the Markets, Part 2
Rekker’s bad day continues! Oh his poor, poor face.
Later, Rekker walked the third level down from the top. Bluelips? That’s a new one… he thought of that vampire, Metsylana. She angered quickly. Hmph… only after the proper respect for her like. Vampires, he had heard more than enough stories. Bats like in damp caves and hollowed out trees, feasting on the raw organs of kidnapped innocents while living on the riches of the Djupar trees. He scoffed. One these days the forces of order and justice would smite such evils, by Empress’s hands, or his.
The boom of an explosion burst into the air. He turned. Off on the opposite end of Ninstels from where he stood, a mile away, a tower of black smoke rose into the air, darkening the sky as it spread out.
“No! Not this early!” A voice yelled from behind. Two hands snatched against Rekker’s collar and spun him around. He looked into the the bright yellow eyes of the vampire, her fangs glinting in the sunlight.
“Hi again, I’m sorry, and I hope you die by falling on your own sword. Okay, now that that’s off my chest, wanna feel special blue boy?” She grinned, wide, all her teeth fangs of varying lengths. She looked past him, pressing a finger to his lips as he opened them to speak. “Sshh. I can the answer in your eyes. We’re a team now, got it? You go do your favorite thing: smacking around people you think you’re better than, and I’m going to make sure what I’ve been planning for… one, two, three, five years doesn’t blow up like those shops over there.” She let go of him, and pushed through the crowd of people running in all directions, covering her ears. “And don’t die!” She yelled, disappearing as she jumped down to the levels.
“Hold on, wait!” He called through grit teeth. The thumps of hundreds of footsteps, yelling and screaming, doors slamming, and wagon wheels rumbling down stone drowned out his voice. People hid behind stalls and fled into caves, him standing in the middle of it all as the crowd around him thinned, dozens bumping and shoving past him. He grumbled, jerked his sword out of its sheath, and sprinted down the third level toward the smoke still billowing into the air, spreading to shade the markets from the sun.
He looked out ahead. Figures with steel helmets obscuring their faces, dressed in piled up black and brown furs with straps studded with rusty spikes, leapt into Ninstels from the grassy plains above. They swarmed into the levels, brandishing, axes that flashed as they caught the light of day. Raiders? Definitely. He smiled, spinning his blade in his fingers, his hand getting hot. Fiends of the forests, striking neutral lands, with a force so large. This one was going to hurt a little.
Grabbing the first one he ran into by the collar, he slammed them to the ground with a clang of their helm hitting the stone. He cleaved his blade through the space between furs and helmet as an axe came for his head. Jerking his sword up to beat it away, the raider staggered back. First mistake! Pain ripped into his arms and lightning surged from his hand to his sword, buzzing, crackling, sizzling. He stabbed into the raiders chest, kicked them off his blade, and caught a fist flying at his jaw.
Wrapping both arms around the hand, he slung them over his shoulder, grunting. They crashed into another that had been running at Rekker axe high. Ahead, more charged. “Hells is the only home you’ll know!” He burst toward them, ignoring his hands searing with pain as the bolts of blue and yellow crawled over them.
A tower of flame exploded into the crowd of raiders. It roared, cracking and spitting, eating at their fur armor. Rekker skid to a stop as the fire disappeared into the air, leaving the raiders coated with leftover flames. “Hmm…” a man stepped into view, tapping at a fallen raider with his sandaled foot. “Odd, wouldn’t you say, they’re not screaming.” He put his hand on his chin and turned to Rekker. He dressed in a smooth, light blue robe that ended at his knees and elbows, a pulled down hood resting on his shoulder. Dark skinned with a short full beard, he tossed a fist sized ruby up and down in his other hand, and the front of his robe was lined with pockets.
“Sage, what are you talking about these raiders-” The took Rekker’s sword and raised it up into view, unfazed by the lightning. “No blood,” they said in unison, Rekker’s eyes widening as the Sage’s narrowed.
The Sage pointed back down to the Raiders, their furs crumbling off into piles of ash, revealing pure white bone. “Solved that mystery.” The Sage turned back to the pillar of smoke ahead. “Still, that does not fix the problem. Quite the day.” The outlines of the raiders scurried all over, axes smashing down onto stall and breaking down doors to caves. More fires rose, some raiders holding up torches to the sky. The Sage tossed his ruby up again, but it stopped in mid air above his shoulder, glowing bright crimson. “Keep it up, soldier!” He ran, leaping down to the lower levels.
Skeletons?! That Vampire, the fiend. Rekker snorted, running again toward the first explosion, the path near deserted by civilians. Someone less kind than I might have killed those vampires on sight. On Ctaph and Order, why does the righteous path lead to this? He kept going, scowl deepening and teeth grinding together as he saw the sacked stores and bodies on the ground pooled in blood. He cleaved through more undead disguised in furs, the pain from the lightning crawling up to his shoulders. Another group of them came, axes dripping with red. He growled.
I. He lopped off one’s head. Will. He ripped the helm of another and crushed its skull on his knee. Kill. He jammed his sword back into its sheath, letting the lightning envelope both hands, webbing them with clawing blue and yellow, and grabbed a skeleton until the furs caught flame. Her! He lift the burning fiend as its armed flailed and threw it into the rest of the crowd, the flames spreading as it crashed into them. He ran through them, stomping down on flaming skulls.
A hand jerked behind an abandoned fruit stand. “Change of plans, okay?” The Vampire peeked over the stand, then crouched back down. “You need to help me find someone.” She slipped a bag off her shoulder, dug inside, and shoved a sketch of a woman with long hair and a face painted with scars, smiling with her left canine tooth missing.
He bat the parchment away. “On Ctaph, and Order, for your crimes today, on-”
“‘On top of the crime of your birth, heresy, and having big teeth, I hereby put you under arrest.’ Is that it? We’ll do that later. Talk less. Hells, why did you have to be the only one able to swing a sword around here?” She looked up to the sky. “Where are they? Oh, you’re still here. Remember: tall lady, lots ‘a scars, really, really, really loud, keeps a shield around. Got it? Great!” She shoved him out into the open.
“What is going on?!” he yelled as she made shooing motions from behind the fruit piled up on the stand. “What did you do, you started this didn’t you?!”
“No, oh and you’ve got a little something uhh…” Rekker through his arms behind him and pulled the skeleton over his shoulder, stomping its head into bits as it hit the ground. “Nice catch, now go on, shoo shoo.”
“Listen, I know what you are, and I know how you all are. I should have-”
“‘Killed you when I had the chance,’ gotcha, this is getting a little old though. Want to know what I know? I know someone, Hells, a lot of people are out here dying and…” She sighed, “it’s partially my fault, a lot my fault. But right now stay here yelling me to death, and believe that does hurt, or you could listen, look around, and do something other than parroting your little words of wisdom while as long as those Night troops are out there, more people will die. Now, Mister Rekker, you can keep fighting me here, or find that woman and just maybe save a few people.” She ducked down under the stand.
He opened his mouth, then shut it. Looking back down from where he came, and where he was going, he shook his head. Then, he conjured up the image of that woman in his head, turning back to the tower of smoke, now just the first of many. He ran, jumped, and fell deeper into Ninstels.
He could not get her out of his head as he cut through more groups of skeletons. Trust her? No, he knew what they were like, he knew for sure… But what else was there to do now? The skeletons kept coming, kept killing, and whatever he could save was either already gone or going. All Nine levels around him were now decked with skeletons breaking stalls and rushing into more caves, almost as if… searching.
Were they looking for this woman as well? The vampire, Metsylana, mentioned something about plans. Why need him if the skeletons were hers. He sped forward, shooting his eyes around. But there had been two vampires, and the skeletons followed the other. Only when she was gone did Metsylana speak to him…
“Sage!” Rekker skid to a stop, seeing the man another level below, running with his ruby floating beside him.
“Soldier! Manage to save anyone? I think a few escaped but-”
“No.” Rekker jumped down to the fifth level. He shook his head. “No listen, Sage, I…” He looked at this man, user of soulgems, from the islands that once were the lands of evil before the second refinement. He almost scowled. But not right now. “I have to ask, do you know about what’s happened here?”
“Sadly not, I arrived just today, Otsylmain, he wanted to meet me here…”
“I met a vampire, two of them, one told me to find someone, a woman with a shield.”
“Vampire? Did he say anything else?” The Sage grabbed Rekker’s shoulder.
“No, it was a woman, they both were, they came into the bar on the first level, with six skeletons. They all followed the other one, but I didn’t get her name.” Rekker looked at his feet, arms pulsing with pain. “I don’t know what is going on here either. But can you… help find who I’m looking for, we might find this Otsylmain too.”
The Sage smiled. “Well soldier, helping one of you would be a first. Yet, I will not be the one to not take a hand extended in need. Otsylmain, if he’s here at all, can handle himself.” He shook his head a little. “Now, it looks like I go where you go.” Rekker turned his frown into a slightly upturned line.
OG Deviantart link: https://www.deviantart.com/darkgoman/art/Melee-in-the-Markets-Part-2-796567191
