Of Gods and Warriors ✓

Chapter 41

The sorcery backfired, throwing him several feet back into the storm, and not one, but hundreds of glittering gates of gold materialized around him all at once, their brightness blinding him for a moment.

When he got to his feet again and chanced a look above, his face contorted in horror. "What...are these?"

Pitch-black chains, alive and wriggling like worms, held each of the gates shut. Everywhere he looked, chains dangled from the gates, twisting and coiling around the golden bars. The gates hovered in mid-air, and the chains were much, much longer, trailing all the way down to the parched ground, and stretching to the horizon.

Xenro forced his frayed mind to think. There had to be a way out of this. Moreover, he needed to rescue his friend from this corrupt realm. How long had Draedona's realm been in such condition?

Think.

He found, all the chains, which stretched across the ground in parallel lines, led in the same direction.

Sword in his hands, the God followed. He knew not what awaited him at the end, but he trudged on. The chains lashed out to strike him, to twist around his ankles and wrists-- he defied them all. His blade clanged into those chains, and their virulent magic travelled down his arms.

His skin burned and blistered-- he held his ground. But exhaustion was beginning to claim him once again, a sharp pain rising in his chest.

You have been forsaken. You wield power no better than a mortal man.

Yet should he back away when the Realm of the Dead was in chaos, when his old friend was in grave danger?

He had his centuries of inertness within that statue. Now was the time for action. He pressed on, against the wailing storm, against the chains, against the pain now spreading through his limbs like hellfire.

But nothing could prepare him for the sight he saw when he reached the end of the chains, where they converged into a single point.

The Goddess of Death kneeled upon the dust, face lowered. Chains coiled around her limbs, holding her down so firmly, the links cut into her skin. Her robes were in tatters, rough winds whipping her slack hair this way and that.

If only a few hits from those chains could drain his energy so thoroughly, heavens knew how she felt now, with hundreds of those twisted around her body. They seemed to feed upon her life-force, growing stronger the more she struggled.

He dashed toward her, only to have more chains rise and whip at him. He reared his sword through the air with a great cry, his bewilderment now replaced by fury. “Who dares to infiltrate your realm with this foul sorcery?”

Draedona looked up, surprise washing over her face. "You have come?" It seemed to pain the Goddess to even utter words. "Xenro?"

The chains were wriggling around too much for a comfortable conversation. He dodged another. "So I have! Who did this to you?" he cried, "tell me, who dared taint your realm?"

Draedona's smile was bitter as she looked up, struggling some more in vain. "Wish I knew." Her voice was dry and lips chapped. "All I know is that this is the work of a mortal. The very mortals I have looked after, whose passage into afterlife I made safe, I held their souls close-- protected them from being lost in the abyss! This is how they repay me."

When a few more vicious swings of his sword achieved nothing against those cursed chains, Xenro kneeled too, holding her pale, bony hands in his. His fingers burned, skin turning red and beginning to leak blood. He held on.

Mortals were the reason why his only friend was in such misery.

"His Majesty was right all along," she whispered. "The Chains are nothing new, though. They have appeared before, during the Great War. But now they have come back stronger than ever. As Lord Rhilio said, the root of the problem was in the Mortal Realm. The Apocalypse smothered it only briefly. Now it rises again."