demons could wield it so directly.
The mysterious Arbiter, whoever he had been, was a far more likely culprit for this sudden corruption. What had Mor said? “When he was finished clearing out the old fort, he descended into the catacombs beneath it, and never came out.”
He needed to discover if there was anything left of the Arbiter who had visited Calessa those years ago. A corrupted Arbiter was dangerous, but if there was indeed one who had turned so fully and given so completely into the siren song of the corruption, and had wallowed in it for so very long, the danger would be astronomically high. He almost envied the girl who lay peacefully in his arms, for she would never have to see what horrors might lie below that old, abandoned fort.
The girl needed a burial, or at least for her body to be dissolved by manna energy, so that her energy could return to the land from whence it came. He had expended much of his during the night, and what little had remained in the heartblade had purified the corruption from her. He had not enough within him to purify her body completely so that it might rejoin the manna stream.
D’Arden felt as though he may as well simply throw himself into the corrupted manna font and die, dissolved and destroyed by that which he fought. He had no desire to carry the girl’s body through the trade quarter during the day, where it would be seen by all, and he had no way to give her the proper respect here, which he truly felt as though she deserved.
He set down Elisa’s body on the cobblestones – gently, of course – and clicked the heartblade free of its specialized scabbard at his belt. He drew it forth and examined it, looking for any sign that it had regained some of its power. The light deep within the rounded crystal thrummed faintly, but there was so little that it would not even guide him into his trance state, much less fully dissolve a human body.
The Arbiter strained his mind, searching through it for some historical footnote that might give him some indication. His heart still yearned to save Elisa from the fate that had befallen her, and so he hoped that he might find something in his memory that might still help her. Unfortunately, he found no such idea anywhere in his mind, to his deep regret.
There was nothing to be done for it, he decided at last. He would have to take her body to the graveyard outside of town, and utilize the manna font there to send her properly on her way.
Resolute at last, he picked her body back up into his arms and began to walk.
**
He was forced to stare straight ahead as he passed back through the trade quarter, carrying the limp and ashen form of the young girl who'd died only a few hours before. It was still the early morning, and D'Arden hadn't slept the entire night previous. His arms ached from carrying her the last mile through the streets of Calessa, and now the stares of the townsfolk burned into him as though flames shot from their eyes.
He was carrying the body of one of their own – that much was obvious by the shock of blond hair that tumbled from her head. Her green eyes were closed, but he knew that behind those soft eyelids and dark lashes, those eyes stared blankly outward, dead to the world.
D'Arden passed through the gate without a word to the guards who stood there, those who obviously recognized Elisa as one of their own and stood in silent mourning and acknowledgement. They were soldiers, not citizens – they realized that the price of freedom was vigilance, and that vigilance sometimes required sacrifice. They bowed their heads as he passed, and the gate was opened for him as silently as possible. It closed again behind him as he cleared it.
The Arbiter began the long trek to the graveyard where he'd encountered the risen corpses of Calessa's dead. It was there that stood a manna font, one mostly untouched by the corruption now that he had purified the area, and where he might offer the girl's body properly to the land that it might return to the flow as normal, and not become twisted or reanimated again by the evil that permeated the city.
By the time he reached the cemetery at last, his eyes burned in the morning sun, and the muscles in his arms were on fire. Each step was a staggering lurch as his strength began to give way, all of his special augmentation having been burned away in the combat of the previous night. He was now little more than a man, a man with a task, a man with a mission. Sweat dripped from his forehead in rivulets only to freeze moments later in the frigid air. Each forward movement was a blinding agony, and once the graveyard finally came into view over a small rise, he gave a soft cry of relief and joy. The journey was nearly done, and he would need some time to rest before he would be strong enough to hunt down those responsible for the corruption in Calessa, for he now had a clear idea of where the next part of his investigation would take him. His desperate mind had cursed him soundly for undertaking this extra leg of the journey out of respect for a dead girl that he had met only hours before, and cursed him for wasting time when the corruption still spread, but a deeper, more instinctual part of his mind drove him onward, driven by the hunger, the need for something right and true to happen in this awful place.
When finally he reached the manna font that stood in the graveyard, complete with the wall of force that he'd erected to keep unwitting passerby from passing through the deadly light of the energy, he collapsed to the ground with a cry. The girl's body struck with force that he'd not intended, but he no longer had the strength to keep himself upright, much less her dead weight as well. He weakly lifted one hand towards the font and dropped the energy he'd been silently expending to keep the protecting wall in place, and it vanished.
Refreshing, warm azure light spilled forth from the entrance almost joyfully, suddenly released from its prison. It fell across both of them, and instantly D'Arden felt his strength begin to return to him. His aching body was soothed by the warm, regenerative light of the font, and the exhaustion that ran through the very core of his being began to abate as the manna fed him, replenished him and once more lent strength to its servant. He breathed in deeply, taking in as much of the energy as he could muster in a single breath, feeling the warming relief flood through his veins and his body. Sanity began to slowly return to him, and his gasps for air slowly became instead sighs of relief.
Once his breathing had returned to normal, D'Arden dared to force his body into a sitting position. There was pain, to be sure, and it was sharp, but it was nothing like he'd imagined it could be. Already the exhaustion was fleeing him as he was buoyed once again by the power of the land that he'd been trained to accept in place of his own energy. His body no longer would regenerate on his own; wounds would not heal and fatigue would not leave, not since the balance of power in his body had tipped from his soul to the manna itself. The miles-long walk had been terrifying to him, knowing that if he had not reached the font in time, he would have been powerless to stop his own death.
Strength returned to him more rapidly as he was able to control his breathing, taking in the energy from the manna and centering himself, beginning to replenish his stores so that he might once again have the strength to fight evil. He would need to trance for several hours to make sure he was properly strengthened to go back in and face whatever waited for him beneath the old Calessan fort, but he no longer felt that it was an impossible task.
He lurched to his feet once again, after only a few minutes had passed. Once more he took up Elisa's body and approached the font. With the greatest of care, he laid her form across the crystalline structure of the land's energy vent, all the while feeling more and more of his strength return to him. Once he was satisfied with how she was situated there and ensured that her body would not fall to the ground, he turned away and stepped outside the font, letting the radiance warm his back and allowing the manna to take its time returning the girl's body to the land.
A piercing shriek from behind him caused him to spin around rapidly. His eyes fell upon her just in time to see her leap up from the font and back away towards him, breathing desperately and in a full-blown panic. He was stunned; how could a pure font have raised this child's body from the dead and reanimated it. His hand immediately went to his sword, ready to strike the creature down where it stood, no matter how much it might pain him to do so.
She turned around rapidly, and just as D'Arden was about to draw the sword and cleave her head from her shoulders, he got a full look into her frightened green eyes. No pinpoint of corruption lay there, no hint that she was nothing but a reanimated corpse. Full emotion – fear – was present on her face and she looked at him as a wild, cornered animal looks at its aggressor, her blond locks plastered against her face and her skin pale, but no longer
