BLOOD BOUNDED - THE SHADE - English - Castlevania Lords of Shadow (fanfic) PII

Chapter 42

Beneath the roots, Gabriel fell squarely into stinking water. As if corrupted blood had stagnated between the cracks left by the birth of the tree, in the foundations of the building. Reflexively he rose into guard position and waited.

They did not attack him.

Not quite trusting, he drew his daggers and inched his way through the narrow, stinking cavity of coiled roots. And as it continued, the room took on a more grotesque aspect. What were supposed to be extensions of wood had the appearance of intestines and viscera, hot and throbbing.

The young warrior began to feel as if he were walking through the bowels of a beast. Maybe that's why they hadn't attacked him yet.

A bloody wooden wall loomed in front of him. The surface throbbed as if it were covering a giant heart. What confirmed to Gabriel that this was, in fact, the trunk of the tree, were the silhouettes that writhed as if they were in a permanent and silent scream of horror.

Human faces.

"I caaaaannnn feeeeeel wraaaaaaath" The hoarse and dragged croak came from an old man whose one of his eyes was contorted into a twisted scar. "Freeeeesh... and daaaark... aaaangeeer..."

"So, you know why I'm here," he replied arrogantly.

"Anger was what brought me, do you plan to destroy me the same way?"

"I only have one way." He drew his whip and swung it around him with a hiss.

He could feel the creature's chuckle.

"Naïve..."

Everything around him began to stir and Gabriel braced himself.

"You... can't... kill me..."

"Let's find out." The whip flew and pushed the bloody mass back.

"Even if you destroy me now, anger... will always... bring me... back..."

"And someone else will come to destroy you when that happens!" He stabbed the walls that were closing in on him.

That laughed again.

"Oh, young warrior, if you only see what I can see..."

"Silence!" He was interrupted by the whip tearing a face near him. "I know what you want! And you're going to tell me who brought you to life!"

"So you can pour your anger into her too?"

"her?"

"Oh, warrior, I can see that you don't know how a curse can truly consume, though you suffer from one yourself."

"Who is she? Talk!"

"How can the face of innocence harbor such hatred?"

"It's one of her sisters, right?!" he began to use his daggers to stab the trunk of human faces.

They began to howl in pain in complete silence.

"You may destroy me, but you will only fuel hatred... AAAARGHHHH!"

The dagger had embedded right in the center of his forehead.

"Your gossip stopped making sense a long time ago."

He twisted the blade with deep cruelty. That continued with their agonizing screams with increasingly crooked faces.

"Don't worry" face to face with the damn old man, Gabriel's voice became a low growl "we have all the time in the world. You are going to talk."

Julia and Marie had finished putting up the barriers around the trunk and the branches had stopped moving forward, which was a good thing.

What wasn't good was how deathly quiet her sister was. The truth is that she did not think it was because of the pain of her injury and a while ago she had given up asking.