The Longest Road – Ch. 9 – 4: Portals

  • Those eyes floated in the dark and became the only visible thing in the room.  From the walls, came the deep gurgle of the Reaper as it chanted in a foul tongue.  I felt myself being drawn upward and outward toward the eyes, which flashed stroboscopically in loud booms that filled my ears with a giant's heartbeat. The skeletons cackled obscenely.  Something large and cold pressed against my neck then withdrew.  Grinning, the demon filled my mind with its teeth, drawing something back over its shoulder.

    A shape soared through the air to my left.

    Light bloomed as lightning flashed next to my ear.

    I closed my eyes as the hypnotic stare broke its spell for a moment.  They were so tired, and there was so much light.  There were voices in my head.  There always seemed to be voices in my head.

    "What are you doing!  She'll die!"

    "This must happen, acolyte."  I know that voice, I thought.

    "Gwaihen, you idiot.  Open your eyes!"

    "No!  You'll ruin everything!"  Someone rushed toward me.

    Suddenly, I lay on the floor, certain if I turned my head, I'd find my body collapsed in a headless heap.  When I peered through my eyelids, I found I was whole.  The Reaper shook its axe irritably at me, backing away into a far corner.  My arms and legs glowed brightly, banishing the shadows in the room under a cold light.

    "What is this?" it hissed.

    "Where is Derkeethus?  Where are the souls you've destroyed?"  The voice coming out of my mouth didn't quite feel like my own.

    "You're still looking for the Argonian?  That is all you've come for?"  Crowing with laughter, the skull under the thing's hood opened its maw, revealing a rotting tongue that waggled at me.

    "Let me out!  Haven't you taken enough from me?"

    "Derk?"  I gaped at the demon as my friend's voice burbled out of its throat.  "You ate him!"  A self-satisfied smirk split the skull in two.

    "If you want him, come and get him."

    Swinging its axe menacingly, the demon waited, squinting at the bright light as if it was painful.  I hesitated.  A force pushed my legs forward, a hateful, reedy hiss coming from my lips.  "My lord is foolish!  He wants you to die!" shrieked a voice in my head--the spriggan's.  My legs moved faster as they marched to the retreating shadowy form.  His minions fled, shattering into black dust.

    "Take your light elsewhere, mortal," the thing growled.  I ducked his axe, the air whistling over my head.  When the light surrounding me touched its bones, they blazed as if on fire.  An unearthly howl screeched over the incessant thunder, and it backed further into its corner.

    "Get that away!"  With a wild swing, its arm waved me away, just missing the side of my head by inches.  Seizing the moment, I slapped my glowing hand on its thigh, watching in awe as my flesh sank into the bones like a hot knife through butter.  Screaming in pain, the Reaper flailed.  The long arm of its axe connected with my side, and I fell to breathless to my knees.  I tried to pull my away free from the creature's leg, but the skin felt welded to the bone.

    As the light continued to set its body on fire, I became more entangled with its thrashing form.  "What's happening to me!" I cried, feeling my arms lock with the thing's ribcage as it knelt to crush me in a body slam.

    "Stop resisting!" the spriggan snapped, speaking through my mouth.  "The more you fight it, the more you'll be stuck!"

    Once I relaxed, I found my head fusing with the Reaper's torso, our bodies melting and merging until all was fire and darkness and light.  At last, I saw out of the thing's red eyes as its skull erupted into white flames.  Its pain became mine as light consumed my vision until even the inside of my mind cast no shadows.  The scream that shook the walls of the tomb would have, should have, woken the dead.  "You've done it!  It's dead!  It's--"

    --I stood shakily on grey ash, gazing at the Wall.  It looked smaller, more real.  My head ached.  I spent a moment breathing and trying to remember which way was up.  Once I figured that out, I remembered what just happened and leapt to my feet in blind panic.  Frantically, I checked my limbs and hands, fearing that I had somehow become the axe-wielding fiend.  To my relief, I saw only translucent Bosmeri skin.  The leaves floating around me had yellowed, their supple swish of movement diminished into the harsh rasp of wintering beech trees.  It's dead.  It's finally dead.  And the spriggan is gone.

    "Now this looks very familiar."

    I spun around, ready to flee, and only managed to stagger drunkenly.  My friend grinned at me.

    "But I suppose you've forgotten all about Markarth...  So many bottles of wine and stolen gems.  How did we ever carry it all?" he continued.

    "We?  You were the one stuffing rubies the size of fists inside my pack!"  I blinked owlishly at the Argonian, trying to come to grips with the fact that he was now standing before me and that I was out of that dark tomb.

    "And you were the one clogging the city plumbing when you tried to get rid of the loot.  Then what little I recovered you gave away!"  Derkeethus continued to grin sharply, his eyes suddenly alive and delighted at the memory.  "Just like old times, isn't it?  I'd forgotten what flirting with you felt like."

    "More like bantering from what I recall.  I take it this was something that demon took away from you this time?"

    "Yes, among other things."

    A beat of silence passed between us.  I watched the ash for a moment, then sighed.  "It was always banter to me.  I'm sorry it was never anything more.  I know you wanted--"

    "I know.  Well, now I know.  You shouldn't have come here to free me.  All I can do now is say goodbye.  There's nothing holding me in this awful place now."

    "That's all I wanted to do."  The Argonian regarded me skeptically as I stammered a quick recovery.  "Well, that and save your soul from eternal torment and switch places with you."

    Derkeethus huffed and rubbed at the back of his scaled neck.  "Switch places.  Waxhuthi, Henny.  Are you stupid?  It was my turn to go back to the Hist.  I get to come back, in a manner of speaking.  You don't."

    "But--"

    "You have someone to live for.  Why don't you make the best of it for once?  I can't believe I'm saying this to a Bosmer of all people, but when will you start enjoying what you have now instead of what you could have?"  I glared at him, refusing to believe that all the pain and suffering I'd just endured was for naught.  For several moments, we maintained this staring contest, each of us refusing to concede.  At last, I broke his gaze and glanced at a warped rock formation somewhere behind him.

    "You're right."

    "Of course I am.  But thank you anyway for saving me."  He looked up at the black hole in the sky, smiling a little to himself.  In the center, a tiny star flickered.  "I think that's my cue."

    "Okay," I said unsteadily.  My friend's arms wrapped around me and squeezed when I returned the embrace.  "Goodbye Derk."

    " 'Bye Henny.  Maybe I'll see you when I hatch again.  I hope I don't come out female..."  With a mock shudder, he pulled away and began to drift lazily upward as if drawn by a rope.  I watched him rise slowly until he was nothing more than a speck.

    Shortly after Derkeethus departed, I sat in the grey sand, unsure of what would happen next.  After a while, I lay down and watched the sky, wondering if my own star would appear to take me back to the world of the living.  Or the dead.  When nothing happened, I started to drift off, dreaming intermittently of Valindor shouting at me and looking concerned.  At one point, I thought the Soul Cairn was collapsing around me, spinning away into an empty void.  I fell into the void and into sleep.

Comments

4 Comments
  • Kynareth
    Kynareth   ·  August 11, 2013
    It will be interesting to see where Gwaihen's spirit wills herself to be, now that all she was willed has been accomplished...maybe at the expense of herself, but I have a feeling she would still find that worth it.
  • Matt Feeney the New Guy
    Matt Feeney the New Guy   ·  April 27, 2013
    I think the Reaper (and the Soul Cairn) were handled really well (and you said you had fun writing the Soul Cairn, so that's good). I think seeing her soul pass over would be a good idea. I figured Serana would die at some point, but I figured she would d...  more
  • Kyrielle Atrinati
    Kyrielle Atrinati   ·  April 27, 2013

    Could be.  The spriggan certainly thought it was.  I think there's definitely an element of the Void in the Soul Cairn.  Something about it couldn't simply be created by the first necromancers.  
    I don't recall doing so precisely.  I know I w...  more
  • Matt Feeney the New Guy
    Matt Feeney the New Guy   ·  April 27, 2013
    Read the ending already but these questions fit here better than the final one: was that thing some sort of fragment of Padomay? Did you imply a connection between the Ideal Masters? And was the Reaper the thing that killed Serana? I'm actually still curi...  more