Darkness Rising 1 - Chained

Chapter 17: The Feast of Blood

Emelia watched transfixed as the humour moved towards the baron and Lord Jerstis. She stood with Jem and Hunor, all their hands still bound. Sir Minrik was positioned to the right of the group. Lady Orla had stepped several paces to the left, leaving Ekra-Hurr in the centre, the thrones forty feet before him and the door perhaps another forty behind.

 “The crystal, mortal, or your flesh will adorn my shoulders like a widow’s shawl,” the humour said.

“You shall have no shoulders to bear it, Pale-spawn,” Lord Jerstis said.

In a blur he had drawn his longsword and struck a mighty blow atop the demon’s helmet-like head.

Green sparks erupted as the blade scraped off the creature’s skull. The humour swung its hook with ferocious speed into Jerstis’s armoured chest. The wicked barb plunged deep and erupted from his back in a cloud of blood.  The demon flicked its arm and Lord Jerstis slumped dead on the throne.

A symphony of drawing steel rang around the hall. Baron Enfarson leapt to his feet, arms raised. “No! Hold your blades. We cannot battle this demon.”

Hunor tugged on the bonds to get Emelia and Jem’s attention. He nodded to the sword that had fallen on the floor two minutes earlier. They began to edge towards it, capitalising upon Sir Minrik’s distraction.

Baron Enfarson was pleading to the creature whose glass eyes were like a window onto the Pale.

“Quigor, please. Recall our deal. Our plan. It was to make us magnificent. We would have lived for an age. Quigor, I know you are inside there.”

“Stall me not, mortal. The crystal shall earn you your wish.”

Enfarson reached into the drawer and pulled the crystal out. He held aloft the glowing blue crystal that Emelia had seen four years ago at the Keep.

“Blessed Torik, it’s beautiful,” she said. “Can you hear its sound? It’s so pure.”

“Come on, love,” Hunor said. “This is no time for your daydreams. All I can hear is my bowels loosening.”

Baron Enfarson, his hands shaking, held the crystal forth and the humour grasped it with its metallic claw. Little fragments of rust fell like pollen. The whole chamber held its collective breath.

“The crystal has been given freely, as is the way.”

With a sudden swing the humour embedded the hook into the baron’s belly. Baron Enfarson gasped and scrabbled feebly at the black robes of the demon as it twisted the hook upwards and into his thorax.

“Your wish. Your reward,” it said.

The baron clung to the humour as his lifeblood ran in a torrent onto its robes. A halo of green fire seemed to dance around his head as he died, in contrast to the light of the blue crystal in the creature’s claw. The humour held it aloft in delight.