Blade(Part 3): Dusk

Chapter 14: Ptolemar

The Harpy and Cyclops were the targets given to Ptolemar by Queen Azia. As far as he could tell, the Harpy was the one in charge of the Skaolan Peacekeepers' occult rituals and magic. She was the one who would turn Skaolan children into Shadows of the Abyss. Ptolemar remembered when he was wrongfully locked in the dungeons of Septe, and heard the screams of other children locked up down there, but also heard echoing wails and growls from the darker depths beneath the city. He couldn't even begin to imagine what might have happened to him if his mother hadn't saved him that night. Ptolemar would have been twisted, mutated, and corrupted by the Abyss. Kai and Xerxei didn't seem as though that was what was done to them, though. Maybe after meeting Azia, some light that was still in them somehow burned away some of the darkness. They were the only two Shadows who seemed to be capable of that, though. Newer Shadows might not be so lucky. That's why Ptolemar wanted to save them while he still could. Azia told him that his search for the Harpy would take him to the pyramids built by ancient Skaolan citizens a few dozen miles outside of Septe. It made sense that someone trying to raise the dead as Shadows would look for corpses to animate where tombs dotted the land, but Kai and Xerxei told him that they had to be fresh corpses, not withered and rotted ones like what was in the tombs and pyramids. The Sands of the Dead were also a likely spot for the Harpy to go. They were where Septe's poorest citizens were buried, and they were nothing more than pits in the sand if not piles of rotted and decayed bodies. As Ptolemar observed the Sands of the Dead, he noticed that there were a few pits that were funnel-shaped holes, as if something was pulled out of them.

"Bodies?" he guessed. It couldn't have been anything else. Someone was digging bodies from their graves in the Sands of the Dead and carrying them off somewhere. Nothing could have made Ptolemar angrier. He would find the Harpy and kill her. The holes in the sand looked as though they were dug rather recently, and multiple sets of footprints were in the sand, leading towards the pyramids. Ptolemar followed the tracks, all along a path between the sand dunes. It was a winding path, tread upon only by people carrying the bodies of Skaolan nobles to be buried. King Aziz would likely never be carried here, since he's an Ancient One, not a human being. If he was human, though, he would likely want thousands of years of work put into his tomb, being the egotistical, narcissistic bastard he was. Once the pyramids came into sight, Ptolemar's eyes widened. The pyramid that the footprints led to was absolutely massive, at the size of a city as big as Septe. Three different tiers made up its structure. The bottom one being the biggest, and the top being the smallest.

"Woah," Ptolemar gasped. He had never seen any of the pyramids up close, and his breath was taken away by the sheer size of it. It must have taken decades, if not centuries to build, and whatever was inside of it could only be imagined. If the Harpy was inside, it could take Ptolemar years to find her, which is why he wasted no time going through the door before her trail went cold. If the Harpy was looking for corpses to resurrect, she would be going to the crypts underneath the pyramid. That's where Ptolemar would look. He pulled a torch off the wall and lit it with the blade of his flame-enchanted khopesh before making his way through the pyramid's dark corridors. He could only see what the torch revealed, so he kept the flame in his left hand, and his blade in his right. While the torch did reveal several feet in front of him, anything beyond that was pitch black. All he could trust to guide him was what his mother told him about ancient structures such as this. As he went far enough down the first corridor to where the sunlight wouldn't shine through the darkness, Ptolemar guided himself through corridors and passages that overlapped with armories, execution rooms, and torture chambers. The ancient Skaolan architects that designed this pyramid clearly had a taste for what would happen in such places.

"So, do any Skaolan lords buried here want to show me who's going to desecrate your graves?" Ptolemar wondered, his voice echoing in the dark corridors. Suddenly, he heard a loud "thud" in front of him. He slowed down to creep forward, with his sickle sword at his side, ready to swing as soon as something jumped out in front of him. Instead, he was met with a Skaolan swordsman on the ground, crawling on his chest with blood trailing behind him.

"What happened?" asked Ptolemar.

"She..." the soldier rasped. "Betrayed us."

"The Harpy?" Ptolemar questioned. The soldier didn't answer. His last breath left him, and he died. Ptolemar could hardly feel empathy for him. Every soldier of Apeph and Aziz deserved to die, and the one who just died was no exception. Ptolemar went further into the pyramid, finding a dozen more soldiers, spearmen and swordsmen alike, dead on the ground. Someone who could kill a dozen highly trained soldiers of the Peacekeepers must have been highly trained herself, but the soldier who just died said that she betrayed them. Was it the Harpy, or someone else? Once Ptolemar was far enough into the ruins of the pyramid, he found himself on a staircase that was surrounded by darkness. His torch wouldn't illuminate anything to the sides of the stairs, so the only thing he could see beyond it was darkness. Endless darkness. There was a light at the bottom of the staircase, though. It was a tiny light, only lighting a few feet around it. As Ptolemar went further down the stairs, he found what was causing the light. It was a torch that burned above a table with a body on it. A child's body, who seemed to have been eight years old when he died. This must have been why the Harpy killed her soldiers. She wasn't looking for an artifact of the Ancient Ones or something like that. She was trying to resurrect her dead child.

"You're human, aren't you, Harpy?" asked Ptolemar. "An Ancient One wouldn't care whether their own child lived or died." A woman emerged from the darkness of the deepest crypt of the pyramid, wearing the crimson dress of a Skaolan noblewoman. Around her neck was an amulet with the Peacekeepers' gorgon sigil etched into it.

"Correct, Blade of Midnight," she said. "I care not for the Peacekeepers, or their false ideas of order. Just him." She was looking to her dead child on the table. Ptolemar would have felt sympathy towards the Harpy if she hadn't been raising corpses to turn them into Shadows, so he felt nothing for her.

"Is that supposed to make me not kill you?" he wondered.

"I'm doing this for him!" the Harpy screamed.

"You're doing it for yourself!" Ptolemar denied.

"You know nothing," the Harpy hissed. "You know nothing of what I have suffered through losing him. The Peacekeepers promised me there was a way to bring him back to our world."

"They lied to you," Ptolemar growled. "The process of reanimating a corpse is dark and perverted, and you know it. Did you plan to raise your son as a Shadow? He would be a murderer, and a monster."

"He would not!" the Harpy screamed. She hurled a black dagger at him, and Ptolemar dodged his head sideways before throwing his own throwing knife at the Harpy. The short blade stuck in the Peacekeeper's neck, and blood splashed from the wound as she fell backward. Ptolemar then went around the table and ripped the Peacekeeper amulet off of the Harpy's neck. As he looked to her, then to the child on the table, part of him almost wished he hadn't killed her, but she would have raised her own son from the dead as a Shadow of the Abyss. He wouldn't have been her son, anymore. Still, he couldn't help other than to feel at least a tiny bit of sympathy for her, whether she was a Peacekeeper or not. At least she was with her son, now.