Aldruin, Chapter I: Infected
Aldruin
Chapter I: Infected
By Kimono-Box-Fox
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il pulled her self onto one knee--up from the muck of the alleyway, grasping her sword arm as the were-beast padded off in the fog. She cringed, furious at her failure. Its two companions lay dead. Once wolf-creatures, they now lay in bloody pools, stripped of their pelts and left twisted human corpses by that old elven blade that the Artificer's Council had presented her for this mission.
It was a hollow victory; one that Gil savored not a moment of.
Defeated, and now I've got the curse, she thought, as she clenched but one of the many bloody bite wounds that dripped red as wine over her rose pink uniform. She slammed a fist into the flagstones, splashing water. Van would be disappointed in her. She had gone soft, had hesitated when she locked eyes with the beast and saw a human's pleading soul within it.
It's just like that time, when you died. All because I can't forget what you did... And now? Her thoughts were cut short, though, as her vision blurred. Her grip loosening, the veined, leaf-like green blade of the sword contracted and changed its hue, reverting to ordinary grey steel, and clattered to the ground. Whatever magic had served to help her, it would not stem the flow of her blood now, nor the more grievous wound in her that had yet to show its full depth. Gil collapsed, her face splattered in mud, her glasses cracked and skewed half-on her face. She began to slip into that familiar nightmare, again, as she slipped on the edge of consciousness, toward oblivion's icy black reaches.
Two of us enter the hollow in the tree, blades in hand; it's the mission where we were supposed to investigate the cult activities. I stand there, and draw my blade, and he says "Wait".
_ _
_"Wait, and I will go, Gil. I don't want what happened to Jonen to happen to you, too. So it's better if I go alone. You stay at the entrance, make sure I don't get ambushed from behind. Make sure the way out is clear. If its just cultists you stop them, by any means necessary. But if I don't come back... if you see any lycanthropes come out from where I'm at, I don't care where I am, or what's become of me -- you run, and you get Van, and you tell him this mission is bust--to quarantine this whole place with the rune wards, purge it with fire, I don't care about what happens to me. Bring the whole Altian armada down on this god-forsaken place hurling sulfur and brimstone in their airships if you have to. That's an order. I can't face Van knowing that I lost both of you today, Gil, and I won't let you get sacrificed. It'd be crazy of me." _
_ "Nicholas, you can't; this mission is what's crazy!"_
Or
_ "Nicholas, Stop! I'll go with you!"_
_ That's what I want to say every time. But I don't. I obey him as my superior._
_ _
He smiles. He always smiles. Every time I have this nightmare... he smiles, and then turns, and walks away slowly, as if he's telling me it will all be alright. He never looks back. Not once. And I don't follow him. I don't... I don't... I... but soon, I get worried, and I forget myself, and I run in carelessly. Just like today. Just like then. And I stumble into a trap. It's all been a trap, all from the start. He says:
"Gggggil... We were all wrong, Gil... Van, the Council all of us... and... and I...I can't control, Gil, I can't... Gil, why didn't you listen to me and rrrrrrrrrrru-AHHHHH!"
The cultist strikes him with his rod. And then he turns. I can see Nicholas's eyes inside the animal, but it's... Nicholas isn't human anymore. He's trapped inside something else. And now it's going to take me, and I can't raise my blade... I can't draw it on Nicholas--no!
His chest flares, he stands, breathing out of an animal's tooth-filled muzzle... a tail shreds what tatters of cloth are left on his hindquarters... long and black... waving like a tattered black funeral cloth... like the Reaper's cloak. My love is a beast of murder and death now. It--he bears toward me, full of fury... and yet terrified. I can still see the helpless fear of a human--my Nicholas--in that monster's eyes and it makes me even more unable to act... I can't, it's him, I can't... but he keeps coming, and coming, closer, until... and then... and then... and then...
*SQUELCH*
* * *
Gil lay in the puddle, an inch from the two slaughtered beasts. Her eyes widened in incredulity, not to water, but to a sea of red. It stained her glasses; it stained her clothes and hair. It stained her to the very soul.
And then the rain came_._
End of Chapter I.