A claw tore across his chest, penetrated his armor, and bit into flesh. Terrifyingly, his body began to grow sluggish, the venom of ghouls' gashes doing its work. He continued to swing his long sword while he tried to fight off the poison. His body grew heavy, slowed. He wanted to call out for Jak but his tongue weighed a hundredweight. Claws tore into him. He couldn't move. Ghouls pressed closer, bit into his flesh and fed on him. He felt their fetid breath hot on his skin, felt their foul saliva mix with his blood as they tore loose morsels of his exposed flesh. The excruciating pain set off a spark shower in his brain but he could not move or scream, could not even blink, could only watch helplessly as ghouls fed on him and he died.
Not tike this, he desperately prayed. Mask, not like this! If the Shadowlord heard his plea, he made no response. Gale thought he was dead.
Jak suddenly leaped into his field of vision, bloody blades held high. The little man snarled challenges and lashed out with both blades at the ghouls biting at Gale. They pounced after him, but the tittle man ducked, whirled, and ran one through the chest with his dagger and short sword. It squealed and fell over dead. Jak had his blades free in an instant.
Three ghouls surrounded the tittle man. They lashed out with daws and teeth. Jak whirled, dodged, fought tike a rabid badger. Gale could do nothing but watch. Jak bled freely from many wounds-the tittle man wore no armor'-and Gale knew that if he succumbed to the paralyzing poison they would both die.
The three remaining ghouls charged the tittle man at once.
Like a red-headed whirlwind, Jak ducked, spun, and rolled. Claws flashed and tore into his exposed hack, but he rolled away and retaliated with an upward dagger thrust through the groin of one ghoul. It screamed in agony and fell writhing to the floor. The tittle man jumped to his feet, jerked free another dagger, and rushed the last two. Rushed them!
Gale had never seen Jak so… savage. Teeth gritted in a snarl, the haMing tore open the gut of one ghoul, then finished it with a stab through the race. The last gray horror tore into his exposed flack. Bed blood sprayed and Jak buckled. The ghoul leaped for him, jaw? wide. Jak had nothing else to do but fall bade, hold his short sword vertically like a pennon pole, and let the creature impale itself. The thick blade of his short sword burst through the back of the ghoul in a spray of purple. It squealed once, convulsed, and moved more.
He'd done it!
Covered in purple and red blood, the little man squirmed out from under the dead ghoul. Gasping, sweating, he tried to stand but wobbled and sagged to his knees. Gale could see his small body trembling. Whether from exhaustion, rage, or fear, he could not tell. After taking a moment to recover, Jak rose and pulled out his holy symbol.
'Hang on, Gale,' he said. He took a deep breath, gathered himself, and intoned the words to a healing spell. Instantly, the wounds on his back, arms, chest, and face closed to pink lines, then vanished altogether. He sheathed his blades, recovered his dagger from the body of a ghoul, and picked his way through the carnage to Gale. -
'Dark and empty,' he softly oathed, upon studying Gale's wounds. 'You're as cut up as one of my mom's stew carrots.' He giggled at that, and Gale thought he heard hi the laughter the beginnings of hysteria. The little man recovered himself quickly, however, and returned to business. '
'Fast the wounds,' he said, and repeated the magical syllables of a healing spell while touching Gale's hand. The pain vanished instantly. Gale's torn skin knit itself back to wholeness. The horrible wounds closed. Jak had cast a powerful spell.
'Now the paralysis.' Jak mouthed a more complex prayer while waving his holy symbol before Gale's frozen body.
Like the wounds, the paralysis suddenly vanished. Free to move, Gale sagged, lowered his blade, and found his right hand buried in his cloak pocket, clutching the felt mask.
Odd, he thought. When the ghouls had surprised him, he had drawn his blade and unconsciously reached for the mask. Very odd.
'Feel better?' Jak asked.
'I do,' Gale said, and pulled his hand from his pocket. He examined his flesh. No trace remained from what had been a multitude of wounds. Thank you, my friend.'
Embarrassed, Jak waved away his gratitude and smiled awkwardly.
Gale surveyed the carnage. The corpses of eleven ghouls lay amidst the broken weapons on the blood soaked floor.
'You need a few minutes?' he asked Jak. 'We can wait.' The little man had to be taxed after all that.
Jak turned to face him, fire in his green eyes. 'No, I'm ready now.'
'Let's move then.'
Jak nodded. 'Where?'
The basement,' Gale said.
CHAPTER NINE
Gale walked out of the armory, turned left, and headed back toward the short flight of stairs that led back up to the main hallway.
'We can't access the stairway to the basement from this level,' Gale said over his shoulder. 'Well have to go back up to the first floor. It's not far from there.'
Not far at all. Where before they had walked out of the offices and turned right into the main hall to reach the armory, now they would go left to reach the stairway down to the basement.
Jak nodded and they continued on, wary.
After a few minutes, they reached the base of the stairs where Gale had killed Willen. The ghoul pack had reduced the corpse to a virtual skeleton. What little flesh remained hung from the twisted body in frayed ribbons. Everywhere purple blood stained the floor. Gale could only imagine the orgy of feeding that had occurred here. The odor made his eyes water. He swallowed bile and kept down the vomit by sheer force of will.
Willen's femur-nearly Jorn from his pelvis-stuck out at a grotesque angle and extended into the void in the wall. It vanished into nothingness just above the knee. With each pulse of the gate, a bit more of the body inched into the emptiness.
Lake the ghouls, the gate too seemed to be gulping down portions of the corpse. Thick streaks of light gray and dull white-the color of Willen's skin and bones- now swirled amidst the dark gray and pitch black whorls of the void.
After taking in the scene and no doubt having thoughts similar to Gale's, Jak began to heave. He covered his mouth to hold back the vomit, but quickly lost the battle and retched Matilda's chunky fish stew onto the planked floor. As with Willen's blood, the vomit began a slow migration across the floor toward the ever-hungry void.
Though the sight of it flowing for the gate disturbed him, Gale nevertheless welcomed the vomit's acrid smell, a human smell that overwhelmed the inhuman reek of rot and death. He waited while Jak emptied his stomach and finished retching.
After a few moments, Jak gathered himself. He stood bent over with his hands on his knees, breathing hard. He looked up at Gale through watering eyes and wiped his face sheepishly.
'Dark,' he said. 'Sorry, Gale. Ate too much, I guess.'
'I guess,' Gale said with a half-smile. Seen too much, more likely. Gale could sympathize. It had been an eventful day-and-a-half Hang on, little man, he thought.
Recovered now, Jak studied Willen's corpse and eyeballed the gate with an appraising gaze. 'It's big-ges,' he announced after a moment. 'The gate… it's bigger.'
Jak was right. The gate was bigger, marginally so, but definitely bigger. Gale had missed it. 'How?' don't know,' the little man said thoughtfully, and stroked his whiskers. He approached the gate and peered in, careful to avoid stepping on Willen's corpse.
'It drinks the life-force of the living,' he said. 'Like the shadow demon. Probably the more it eats, the more powerful it gets.' He stepped back from the gate, shrugged, and looked over at Gale. 'Maybe with each pulse, it consumes a little bit of our plane and thereby grows larger…'
Gale waited. The little man was still working it through.
