Fan Fiction ❯ The Soul Reaver and The Spirit Shield ❯ Reunions ( Chapter 33 )

Chapter Thirty-Three

Raziel and Jenise stepped out from the time streaming chamber within the Sarafan Stronghold. As they walked away from the chamber's doors, they slid to a shut. An echo resonated through the chamber from the stone doors meeting. Raziel fancied a glance at the doors behind him, and noticed that the crystal above the door darkened as the chamber sealed itself from the world.

The warriors entered the vast corridor outside Moebius's chambers. Emerging from the previously inaccessible room, they startled two guardsmen who had been on watch waiting for Lord Moebius's return. Their shock lasted but a moment and they immediately took to arms. One of the two guards immediately recognized the pair who had presented themselves.

"It's that foul creature and his whore! Returned to seek your revenge wench?" sneered the guardsman who Jenise had encountered during her last visit to the stronghold in this era. Jenise drew her sword and crouched in a battle ready stance.

"Revenge? For what? A battle that Stephin could not walk away from either?" she snorted.

A grim smile spread across the guardsman's face. "So you do not know?"

Jenise's amusement grew into a dangerous ire. "Know what? Tell me, guardsman, what I do not know. Or else I shall have to force it from your dying lips!"

"Tis not us that will be meeting our ends!" cried the guard.

With the threat, the guards attacked Raziel and Jenise. The match was in very poor favor for the guards. A few quick blows and one of the guardsmen was now a corpse. The other was suffering, unable to stand on his own. The priestess `happily' obliged to help him stand, holding him up by the collar of his armor.

"It was very foolish of you not to divulge me with your information," Jenise growled deeply in the guardsman's face. She raised her sword to his throat for emphasis. "Tell me what you have kept from me, and I shall spare you. Defy me, and I shall let my accomplice devour your soul like he did your comrade!"

There was a trace of fear in the guardsman's eyes, but defiance was more abundant. However, he opted to comply with Jenise's demands.

"I shall tell you, but only because I know it will cause you suffering in the long run," the guard began his devious explanation. "Your friend, the sorceress…Malia, I believe…has been found guilty of treason. She has been convicted of the crimes of aiding a vampire. She should now be receiving her punishment."

Jenise's eyes widened in shock. "What is her punishment?"

"Death…by torture!" the guard sneered, laughing at Jenise's plight.

Enraged by her prisoner's delight in the predicament, Jenise decapitated him in one clean swipe. She quickly stood to her feet and ran off in the direction of the Stronghold's prison cells. Noticing the priestess was not headed in the direction of the exit, Raziel called after her.

"Jenise, where are you going?"

"I have to find Malia before it's too late! I have to save her! It's my fault this happened. We should have taken her from here when we had the chance!" exclaimed the priestess.

As Jenise rounded a corner, she was nearly jumped by a Sarafan knight. She dodged at the last moment, and as she passed by him, she clipped him on the back of the head with the hilt of her sword. The knight was sent careening forward with no control of balance, and tripped towards Raziel. The wraith vampire backhanded the knight, sending him into a wall. The collision between the knight's head and the wall left the Sarafan warrior unconscious on the floor.

"The least you could do is be a little more careful," Raziel commented as the two continued their way.

They traveled through the corridors, occasionally coming across a knight or two. They took as little time as necessary dispatching their foes. Fortunately for the knights, Jenise's urgency meant that she didn't have time to finish them off. Instead, they were left unconscious or with injuries preventing them from fighting any further.

Finally reaching the entrance to the prison cells, Jenise threw open the gate and stormed inside. She hastily ran into the large, open room, but when taking in the sight before her, she stopped dead in her tracks. The shock of the ghastly view left her speechless. Raziel slowly walked up beside the priestess and gazed over at the object of Jenise's attention.

On the far wall, was Malia's limp body hanging from chains in the wall. Her clothes were tattered and torn. Cuts, burns and bruises were visible under the threads of cloth. Blood seeped down from her arms, head and body, down her legs where it pooled on the floor beneath her. Her face was not visible, for her head hung limply under the pressure of gravity.

Taking up the courage to continue, Jenise slowly began to pace towards the form of the broken girl. As the priestess approached Malia, her footsteps echoed through the silent chamber. She gazed at the body of her friend. As the heavy sorrow filled her heart, her eyes began to fill with tears. The excess liquid in her eyes blurred her vision, but she paid her tears no heed.

Jenise was determined to reach Malia, to take her body down from the wretched chains the Sarafan warriors had left her in. And, she was determined to give Malia the proper burial in her honor that any true friend would see fit to have for a loved one. With tears obscuring her vision, Jenise did not notice the small twitch of movement from the body in front of her.

"Do not…come any closer," choked a barely audible whisper. Taken by surprise, Jenise suddenly stopped and stared, dumbstruck. "I will tell you nothing…no matter how much you torture me."

"M-Malia?" Jenise was barely able to squeak out the sorceress's name. She was overcome by the heavy emotions of losing a close friend then moments later discovering that said friend was not dead after all. The overwhelming relief pushed Jenise over the edge as her tears spilled down her cheeks. Having recognized the voice that spoke her name, Malia willed enough strength to lift her face.

"Jenise? Is it really you?"

Tears began streaming down the young sorceress's face. Jenise ran over to her friend and unbound her from her chains. She gently lowered Malia to the ground and was able get a good look at her wounds.

Malia had several deep cuts on her arms and legs, which appeared to have been cauterized shut with hot metal. This ensured that she would not bleed to death, allowing her torture to be prolonged. However, blood still seeped from some of the deeper wounds inflicted upon her.

Jenise looked to Malia's face. The damage there seemed even more horrendous. The most serious of wounds to her face was the large burned section of flesh on the left side of her face. The destroyed tissue stretched from the corner of her mouth, up along the bottom of her cheekbone to the temple, across her face above where her eyebrow had been, and down along the side of her nose. Apparently, someone had taken a torch to her face. Staring at the abomination to her friend's face, Jenise barely made out the darkened area of skin where tattoo ink had once beheld an intricate rune.

The rest of Malia's face had been saved for the most part. Her right eye was bruised and swollen shut. She had also suffered a split lip, though the blood that had seeped from the right corner of her mouth was now dry.

"Malia, I'm so sorry! This is my fault. I let this happen to you!" Jenise's heart wrenched with guilt.

The sorceress shook her head as much as she could. "No. This isn't your fault. I was careless. I left my bedchamber open when I left for my training. I was in a hurry and did not wish to be late again. Someone from my guild saw the bloody sheets still my floor. Knowing it was not my blood, he alerted my superiors. That was when they captured me for questioning."

"But Malia! I left you here with them! If I had taken you with me, this would not have happened!"

"If you had taken her with us, she might not be alive now," Raziel interjected the tender moment. His statement earned a questioning glance from Jenise. "While we traveled to the past, Vorador could have protected her from the vampires of the Cabal, but not all the vampires of this time are his allies. Kain told me once that there were several vampires in service to the Sarafan. In the custody of those vampires, Malia would have either been killed by them, or taken back here."

"He's right, Jenise. It was the best choice to leave me here."

"But Malia, your wounds! You may still die yet!"

"Not if we get her someplace where her wounds can be treated," suggested Raziel.

"I wouldn't count on that," interrupted a different, but familiar voice. Jenise and Raziel's heads snapped to the direction of the prison entrance.

"Stephin!" Jenise growled with absolute hatred. "How could you do this to her! She did nothing wrong!"

Stephin emitted a deep-throated chuckle. "Oh, but she has! She helped a demon and a vampire escape the stronghold. Her punishment is death! But it no longer matters. For I now have who I was looking for right here! I believe we have a fight to finish!"

As Stephin unsheathed his weapon, Jenise gently rested Malia's head on the ground. She rose to her feet and drew her weapon as well. The combatants began to size each other up, when Raziel stepped in the middle.

"And what reason makes you think you can defeat us? If I remember our last battle correctly, I left you nearly as injured as you left Jenise."

Another, more menacing, laugh left Stephin's lips. "I have a very good reason…about twenty good reasons…" he trailed off as twenty Sarafan knights and priests spilled into the chamber.

Raziel and Jenise's eyes widened in horror. Had the Sarafan been expecting their return this entire time? Cornered, and without any other options, the reaver of souls and the priestess crouched into fighting stances. The tension in the air was building up as each side waited for the other to make the first move.

Suddenly, five knights from the front started to charge their opponents. But just as they did so, six of the knights from Stephin's left were thrust forcefully and inexplicably through the air and into the attacking knights. They were all left in unconscious heaps as they crashed into the surrounding walls.

Raziel and Jenise looked from the fallen warriors to the remaining knights for some sort of explanation. Stephin and the still standing knights were left puzzled as well, until four more knights from his right flank were sent careening into stone. After witnessing more of their comrades fall, the Sarafan warriors turned behind them to discover the source of the disturbance.

The sight that Stephin beheld was the most terrifying he had ever come to witness beforehand. The beast that had flattened three-fourths of his men in mere seconds pulsed with foreboding power. He appeared to be vampiric, but his twisted characteristics did not resemble any other vampire, and any trace of his former humanity seemed to have left him centuries ago. Stephin had encountered only one other being who emitted a power as great as this one did. And that being was the Sarafan Lord.

The creature's lips spread, displaying two razor sharp fangs as he grinned with malice. Stephin sensed that the vampire's next move would not be pleasant. And his assumption was correct.

The vampire needed to summon only a fraction of his energy for the attack he had been using. His energy sparked with electricity as the purple aura that surrounded him condensed into a single point. When his attack was prepared, he launched a bolt of energy and the group of Sarafan. Upon striking its victims, the sheer power of the attack sent the six Sarafan warriors hurtling through the air until they ploughed into the stone wall and fell to the ground.

Her sword still drawn, Jenise stared at Stephin's unconscious form, waiting for him to rise. When after several moments he did not stir, Jenise relaxed. Sheathing her sword, she turned her attention back to Malia. Raziel, however, had his attention on the being who stood silently in the doorway.

"Kain. I should have known it was you," the former vampire snidely replied.

Jenise's head snapped up at the mention of the vampire's name. "Kain? He's awake?" she inquired, until she looked at the vampire. "Wait, you're not Kain! You're that strange vampire who intruded in Vorador's mansion over a year ago!"

"You've met him before?" Raziel asked of the priestess.

"Yes. And he wasn't the most courteous of people either. Wouldn't even grace us with his name. A very untrustworthy characteristic in my opinion."

"Forgive me, then, for my prior rudeness," the vampire finally spoke, directing his apology towards Jenise. "Allow me to introduce myself. Raziel spoke the truth upon addressing me. For I am none other than the vampire Kain."