Nightmare Crusade

Chapter 17 - Downfall

Alissa leads the villagers down the stairs but comes to a fearful halt when she sees two figures drop down from the high ceiling, chains still attached to their wrists and dragging behind them. Their skin is purplish, and their eyes are completely white with no pupils. Their mouths are concealed by bandages wrapped around their faces and up around the tips of their cone helms.

"Run!" Alissa orders the villagers, "Flee the town!"

The villagers make a mad scramble to the main doors. Mothers carry their children and the healthy help move along the wounded. The ghouls spring into action and brutally attack the nearest people, whipping and strangling them with their chains. Alissa desperately takes shots at the monstrous marionettes, but she misses nearly every time. Blood from the wounded and massacred villagers drenches the room in red. Alissa watches in horror from the top of the balcony. Feeling completely helpless, she covers her ears and slumps to the floor. Tears being welling up in her eyes.

Then, the sound of the door beneath the balcony being kicked open makes her perk up.

Sword in one hand and trident in the other, Jack yells out from the doorway, "Gentlemen!" The ghouls stop and look. "Eat shit!!"

Jack hurls the trident straight at the head of one of the ghouls, only for it to be immediately whipped out of the air with one of its chains. Jack stands there, completely dumbfounded while the undead creatures begin marching towards him.

The surviving villagers smash the door open, coming face to face with a large, armed group of dissenters.

"What's going on in here?" one of the cultists demands.

Barely paying them any mind, the villagers practically trample the dissenters in their panic to leave the cathedral, not giving them time to react properly and the doors slam back closed behind them. The villagers scatter and dive into the surrounding forest while their former captors recompose themselves and pursue them.

Meanwhile, Jack dodges the slinging scourges and runs up the eastern staircase as the creatures give chase. Alissa draws her bow and, through the blur, tries to take aim at a ghoul galumphing up the stairs behind Jack. She fires an arrow, which wizzes past Jack's ear and hits the ghoul behind him in the shoulder, which doesn't appear to slow its chase.

"Hey!" Jack hollers, "Watch it!"

"Sorry," Alissa mutters.

Jack twists his body around and kicks the ghoul down the stairs into the other one, sending them both tumbling to the bottom.

Both ghouls stand up, unfazed. One starts up the same staircase while the other lassos its chain around the balcony railing and begins climbing up. Jack lops the head off the ghoul on the stairs, sending it rolling down the steps and the rest of it follows. Alissa shoots the climbing ghoul directly in its forehead, but it keeps coming. So, she takes out her hand-axe and begins hacking at the railing. The thing reaches the top—just as the wood become loose enough, allowing Alissa to kick the railing apart and send it plummeting back down to the floor.

She grabs Jack roughly by his shirt and demands, "Where is Fenter?"

"I don't know," he gulps. "He killed Quorthon and disappeared with the damned sword!"

Alissa quickly switches out her axe with her bow and shoots the headless ghoul ascending the stairs. Then she says, "We need to find him immediately, but these things..."

Jack bites his lower lip and sighs. "You go after him," he says, "I'll hold these things off as long as I can."

"Jack—"

"He was last seen in the room behind the door below us. If you hurry, you might catch him before things get catastrophic. I-if I don't make it back..."

Alissa leans in and kisses him on the lips. He smiles in response.