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Don't forget to read up on part 57 to know what is going on!
The sounds that echoed in their heads and ears were not of this world. It sounded like thousands of damned souls were all crying out in pain, begging for the pain to end. Everyone was pale as the screams continued from an unknown origin, and then the smell crept into the room.
Magna rubbed at her nose in irritation as spices she had never smelt before assaulted her senses. It was so overpowering that her eyes started watering, and she was incapacitated with coughing. The rest of the party nearly gagged as the scent of decay swept into the room. It was an oil stench that clogged up their nostrils and made their eyes water. As if the smell wasn’t bad enough, all of them felt it within them. An insatiable hunger.
The three Lifedrinkers had it worse though. They could hear beyond the screams. The voice of their sire, the reason they were able to be what they were, and it was maddening. Adrian watched as Sebastian completely reverted to his beast form, while Trix tried to control him. However, the armoured woman seemed to be having her own problems, as her body tried to meld into the shadows at the king’s feet. Lucien seemed to be faring a little better, but even his teeth seemed sharper than normal.
“No…it shouldn’t have this much power.” He gasped between laboured breaths as he tried to get to his feet.
“Mortis…” Adrian looked up at the revenant.
Mortis placed a hand on the boy’s head and slowly pushed him to stand behind him. The Blazeknights immediately surrounded the prince.
“What about…” started the prince.
Magna snorted, as if clearing her nostrils and took her sword up between her hands.
“She’ll be fine. She just needs to control the scent.”
They waited, not knowing if Sebastian or the screaming horror would fly at them first. The best that had been the king was pacing, while his larger shadow seemed to try and drag him back. It was barely working. The only one who seemed unaffected by all this was Derric, who kept his wolf eyes trained on the door they had barricaded. His hackles were raised, and he was snarling.
Then, just as the screaming reached a peak, it ended. Mortis thought everything would calm, but instead, Magna reacted in a manner he didn’t see coming. Sprint, the girl launched herself to land on her uncle’s back. In one hand she gripped her sword, and the other grabbed a fistful of fur along the side of her uncle’s face. She yanked his head to face the door, and then she dug her heels into his ribs. The movement gave her the exact response that she wanted. Sebastian tore towards the door.
Before anyone could scream a warning, Derric took after them, and the door exploded off its hinges, barely missing the three of them. The sight before the party was unlike anything they had ever seen.
“By the gods.” Breathed Leopold as he pushed Adrian behind him.
At the entrance of the room was what Mortis could only describe as a pile of writhing corpses in various stages of decay. What was worse, was that each skull seemed to be echoing a silent scream or prayer.
Oh dear…
Flames burst from Mortis’s back, and his body moved before he could even think of what to do. Soon, he was in step with Magna. Flames poured off the revenant as he pointed his blade at the creature and muttered a spell he had never known. The creature’s multiple skulls turned their hate and despair at him and screamed. The sound would have torn through a mortal man, leaving him soulless, but not a revenant. Mortis swung an arm out toward his right, causing Sebastian to leap over the sound wave. Derric followed suit as his form grew larger and his purple claws extended.
As a single wave, all the warriors dug into the creature as it continued to scream. Sebastian and Derric launched into the mass with teeth and claws, while Magna leapt from Sebastian muttering something under her breath. A spark appeared within a skull, that shrieked in pain and burst into flames. Mortis’s flames added to the shrieking.
Slimy, oily tentacles shot out of the empty sockets of the creature and tried to catch the would-be attackers, but the Blaze Knights countered them with spells of their own. They weren’t alone as Adrian started his own spell to bring lighting down on the pile as the attackers backed off.
Lucien wasn’t going to be left out of the mix as he pulled a vial from within his cloak. He muttered a few words before he clawed his way up a wall and over the ceiling until he was over the corpse pile. He then dropped the vial, just as Magna noticed him she pointed her blade at the falling vial and simply said, “Shatter.”
Obeying her command, the vial shattered, raining a clear liquid over the creature.
“Back off!” yelled Lucien as he scurried along the ceiling.
Within seconds of the vial’s contents coming into contact with the air and hitting the creature’s flesh, it burst into fire. The heat was so intense, that everyone backed off. The creature, forgetting that it had been attacking them earlier, started shrieking and flailing as the fire consumed it. Unable to get close to the creature, everyone stepped back as the flames slowly started to consume the creature until nothing remained.
Adrian felt exhilarated and wanted to yell in triumph, but when he noticed no one else was celebrating, he quelled his emotions.
“That is what happens when a hunger sits in one place for too long.” Said Lucien.
“Dare I even ask?” asked Anna.
“It’s a literal corpse pile.” Lucien dropped from the ceiling. “They are created when too many undead gather in one place. Instead of forming a horde, they become this thing.”
He then turned to see Magna putting her sword aside and trying to coax Sebastian to revert.
“If the princess there hadn’t led the assault as quickly as she had, I do believe we all would have been part of its pile.”
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Mortis Custos
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