Valiant

Chapter 33: Flirting with Death

The first man flies at me like a bat from hell, crimson and gleaming, black steel hanging from his back. An indistinguishable glint shines in his hand, and his cry meets my ears like a sledge, but he over swings. His diagonal slash sparks off the narrow, stone corridor. I twist my aching body to the left as quickly as I can muster, but a spearhead from behind him slides across my wrist, dragging cloth and skin with it.

Vertigo instantly rushes up to my shoulder, clawing at my skull with razor thin nails. Hazy vision causes me to stumble harshly into the wall. Lucky thing too, because a large, clawed gauntlet grasps at the air where my head was a heartbeat earlier.

I swing my arm up to defend a gruesome blow from the first attacker, and my slick, bloody hand finds his face. I squeeze with all of my might, and his battle cry suddenly becomes a squeal of pain. The steel in his hand grates across the wall as I use the momentum of his swing to fling him down the stairs and into the dungeon.

Another guard is stabbing at me with a javelin, scoring gashes in my garb, but never quite hitting flesh, for lack of space in the corridor, while another is sprinting up the steps toward the alarm bell at the top of the stairs. Fear races into my being as my eyes comprehend the sight, threatening to take my body over, but I somehow manage to force my bleeding wrist to spurt into my attacker's face. As his grip loosens, I wrench it from him and stumble past him to take my aim.

The guard's hands have just wrapped around the rope at the bell when the spear takes him at the nape of his back, eliciting a sharp cry of agony from him as he arches his body and falls. The bell barely tinkles. Relived, I whip around at the rising man with his faced streaked in my blood, and drive my fingers into the crook of his neck with all the force I can spare. He doesn't even moan as he falls, eyes rolled into his head like hunks of spoiled cream.

Suddenly, a sharp, cold thrust enters my back from behind. I bite my tongue until I taste blood, to choke out my scream. The man I had kicked down the stairs had returned. Blind with agony and fear, I lash out behind me with my arm, finding the arm with the iron spike he had lodged into my back.

Thankfully, he is not as strong as I, even though I had hardly moved for a month. I slowly wrest his hand away, and roll over to face him. My right, non-bloodied fist strikes his face three times, sending a shock of numb pain through my palm with each punch. When I see that he is unconscious, I roll onto my knees, and touch the spike lodged in my back. Instantly, I pull my hand back and moan, as if I had touched an exposed nerve. Now both hands are soaked with my own blood.

Too much blood. I quickly rend the scarlet cloak on the guard's back into three lengths of fabric, as blackness creeps onto the edges of my vision like an old friend. My hands fumble as I tie a tight loop around my wrist, slipping on slick, dark red. Finally, I tighten the knot tighter with my canine teeth.

I shove the cloak into my mouth and grip the iron spike throbbing in my back with both hands, kneeling over on the stairs. My mind shoots one, fatal blast of fear at me, and then my world is a red haze of agony, so intense that everything else is ripped from me.

Somebody far away is screaming, thrashing, and dying upon the ground. Surely, this is the end. No. I must get to the bell. This conviction is the only thing that keeps me sane. It is what keeps the dark, snarling wolves of the apocalypse at bay in my mind. It is what takes my weary arm and flings it forward.

I focus as much as possible on the bell, with my blind eyes and shattered will. Each motion incites pain like a conductor at some terrible orchestra. He signals my arms, and they fall dead to the ground. I fall on the stairs, grasping at anything I can to stay alive. Because I must stay alive. But then, he signals my back. Suddenly, death sounds easy. I have no strength left in me to scream, only to push forward. The bell is still leagues away.

When I trip and stumble again, the conductor signals to my legs, and I am paralyzed. Such pain I have never known. I beg and plead with everything that remains in my head to every god I know of. I pray for death, that sweet release from all of my misery. She beckons me like the mother I never knew, with eyes as warm and comforting as a father's smile. You can die once you reach the bell.

I have already died a thousand deaths, it seems to me. All there is left is to push forward. There are no gods in my realm, and death is playing cat and mouse with me. Demons prance in circles around me, stopping to burn and pillage my head and drink deep from my very soul. The dim torch lights around me fade as my hand brushes the cold, unforgiving texture of the bell.

Such relief I have never known as I slip into the great, domed shelter. My hiding place. My home. Then, the conductor signals my whole body at once, and I am drifting, drifting, drifting...

No. I cannot sleep. Not yet. I would die.

But this is what I want.

How many times has Isaac told me to forget my own desires? This is just another one of those times.

The stars swirl and flash above me, swords in my head and eyes. I can vaguely hear footsteps and muffled voices, and then hands are all around me. The world shifts from light to shadow, and endless, boundless pain nests inside my abdomen and my arm feels like a husk of corn. Dead and useless.

Time holds no meaning. Direction is lost. There is only the sights, blurred images of distorted depth. There is the sounds, as if cotton were stuffed in my eardrums in the midst of a thunderstorm. There is the pain, the horrible melody, in which the conductor runs rampant. The only thing that I have the capacity to recall is the moment of Isaac's death. Paulo's death. My first kill. Death. Blood. Fire. Pain.

"You are safe... rest."

The voice seems to float toward me like a dream. Obediently, I tear myself from consciousness and plunge face-first into the void.