Role Playing Fan Fiction ❯ Purifying Hand of Flame ❯ Chapter 4
[ T - Teen: Not suitable for readers under 13 ]
By: Magical Savior 
Miscellaneous: Role Playing Fan Fiction | Genre(s): Romance / Fantasy / Drama / Adventure / Action | Type: Other | Uploaded On: 01.14.2007 | Updated On: 01.18.2007 | Pages: 2 | Words: 1.8K | Visits: 184 | Status: Work In Progress
Miscellaneous: Role Playing Fan Fiction | Genre(s): Romance / Fantasy / Drama / Adventure / Action | Type: Other | Uploaded On: 01.14.2007 | Updated On: 01.18.2007 | Pages: 2 | Words: 1.8K | Visits: 184 | Status: Work In Progress
Disclaimer. This story was created in the setting of White-Wolf's Exalted. Characters created by White-Wolf and not myself will be credited in notes. Reference to White-Wolf canonical storyline and published work will probably not be bothered with; it's part of the setting, which I admit to stealing whole cloth. I, Magical Savior, do not own this series and am not affiliated with White-Wolf in any way. Moving on.
*** Chapter 4
There was a sudden pain in my leg, a digging, burning pain. I stabbed downward, and sunk hard metal into something, a sickening half-sludge that made a thud like a ripe melon busting open.
In an instant, I invoked the power of light. My forehead blazed with radiance, and I saw. All around me. It was unbelievable.
I was surrounded by the dead. They were crawling forward on bloated limbs, torsos, as twisted skeletons covered in rags. Living corpses that walked on two legs with white, milk-rotten eyes that could not see. Everywhere, I could hear the click of bone on bone, of jaws coming together unnaturally with nothing between. Tongues were rotted out or missing.
At my hand, where I almost knelt, there was a corpse. My foot was above its stinking innards. I'd stepped in its putrefied belly, and it still clung to me. I had jammed my dagger through its rotten brain, and it had stopped moving.
Its arms were still dug into my legs. This “creature” did not have hands. The flesh came away from the fingers in sickening clumps, and left sharp talons of bone where fingers should be. And this army, this army of death, was slowly closing on me like a tightening noose.
In my stomach, there was a seething knot of bile that hit the back of my throat. It was hot and filthy. At the horrible stench and vision of this, I almost fell to my knees and emptied my stomach of its nothing contents.
I hadn't eaten. Almost foresight, now. I retched and gagged as I tried to see a way out.
There were no night bugs. There was the clicking and squinching of bone and rancid meat on bone. That was the only sound I heard, the only smell in my nostrils. Even carrion flies had fled the dead.
They had been closing in for many minutes. I would have been torn to pieces, save that I had stepped on one. In one.
It didn't matter. I swept my pack from my shoulders and I threw it at the nearest of them with great force, in one motion. It knocked down perhaps three of the slow, stupid corpses. My sword was in my hand and I turned about swiftly, striking out in a sweeping circle.
I cut through them like rancid butter. My blade swept through the stomach, chests, and skull of at least four of the walking dead. I tried to face other enemies, to get my bearings. My own light threw such twisted shadows, everything looked like it was moving.
Everything WAS moving. The zombies I had cut down, I felt one claw their way to my legs and dig. I took it in, my eyes and ears told me.
All of them, their movements were as jerking and stilted as string puppets. Their jaws came together with a series of loud clicks, as though afflicted with palsy, and not death. That was the noise I had heard, that i had mistaken for some more "natural" sound.
Only the one I'd cleaved his skull had ceased to move. Something squirmed in the fetid brains, hideous. Using the flat of my blade, I smashed at the corpses at my feet. Their skulls were split and shattered until the reeking, foul muck of their brains splattered on me.
Desperation and panic set in. I attacked randomly, killing in every stroke what was already dead, stepping over and around the woman I had been trying to save. These dead things, they did not bleed. I did not know if they could truly die, or if they would soon rise again.
I would be overwhelmed. My feet slipped in the gore that covered the mush that made up this swamp battlefield. There was no way I could keep fighting like this.
Praying for the power to come to me, I lashed out. Golden, killing arcs came off my sword and split the corpses wherever it touched. The flashes of light, they burned into my eyes. I struck again and again, and I could feel the aura of my power surround me as it was being used. I drew power from everywhere, trying to bring second death to these abominations.
It wasn't enough. Some crawling, severed constructs, disfigured with one arm or half a rotten skull, tried to crawl over the girl and feed on her flesh. I slashed two arcing, powerful slices into a V. It reached the ground and split on either side of the travois, leaving the corpses mangled and unmoving in its destructive wake.
One muscular, hunched monstrosity had reached for the woman and I severed its' arm completely. It fell on the woman seemingly unmoving, and I kicked it away. It's arm remained, occasionally twitching.
Nearly blinded, the power around me was coalescing into a bright radiance. My eyes adjusted from darkness to sudden daylight of my own creation. I couldn’t keep using this power, the power that was around me. I could not survive this to be destroyed. Hunted.
I cleaved my filthy sword deep into a tree and began yelling. Curses, epithets, a string of obscenity left my mouth at the foul undead. Almost as if they heard me, I saw their expressionless faces rise to me. I stood still. I had cleared a circle of the dead; it was again as though this had just begun.
On top of the travois, my feet on either side of this target I was protecting, I waited. There was a twitching feeling at my feet, as though some loathesome insects were trying to crawl away from me.
Putting my fists at my sides, I tried to channel power up. I could feel it within me. It welled up. I would release this force. I crossed my arms in front of my face defensively, and waited. Waited to set loose this power.
The dead shuffled toward me. They set their filthy hands upon me. They started biting me, but their teeth and claws could find little purchase on my sweat-covered hide. It didn't take, long, though. The horde started to drag me down. They raked tore painfully at my flesh.
Somehow, this pain was being turned to power. I was refilling me, the power that was inside my frame, not the energy, the essence, that surrounded me in my aura. I could use this inner power better, without fear of calling the hunt that tried to destroy me.
I would destroy.
Just as I was finally being pulled down, I placed my hand upon one foul creature. I released my burning soul. Natural as breathing.
It was incinerated utterly. Its skull dissolved in flame from my hands.
I struck out with fists and feet in all directions, a whirlwind of flame. I had never used a power like this, before. I was purifying these dead things. Suddenly, I was not surrounded - I was free to move and act.
There was another force fighting with me, fighting beside me. I could see a white blur at the edges of my eyes where I could not look - I was too focused on destruction to understand.
Crossing my left hand in front of my body, I pulled back my right hand beside my chest, palm open. A great cry came from the depths of my lungs, and I thrust forward with force in an open-handed strike.
A giant hand of fire sprang from my open palm and smote down the zombies in front of me with great force. I could see its' mark of passing on the trees. I pulled back my hand and struck again, to my left.
This giant hand, it obliterated everything in its passing. Unclean beasts. Ridding this world of them may be my purpose. I was rapidly burning through the undead and my own divine power, but I knew I was turning the tide of battle.
As I fought, I got better glimpses of this force that was fighting beside me. It was pale, ghostly. Perhaps I had summoned holy spirits. The spirit, it fought in one place. But it fought not as well as I... It was a mere distraction to the undead. Perhaps it was defending something here.
The girl, I remembered dimly. I had to... I had to smite this evil that threatened her. The spirit... it was, it looked like... It was her, somehow! She was losing.
I was drunk with raw power. It filled me and screamed for release.
There was no choice. I would knock them all down. I would lay the divine hand of the heavens on this accursed place. This was the last of my power, but I would deliver salvation.
I raised my arm above me, and cried out to whatever source my power came from, to make this my final act.
"By my own hand, I will purify this ground!"
My vision went red, and my lungs were chokingly filled with liquid. A surge moved through me, as though I was both thunderstruck and lightning at the same instant.
My aura, a brilliant circle of light, flared to sudden and great intensity as I began to call on the power around me. I began to see a shape, a form from force. I would bring this form out, call it forth.
Feeble corpses were not close enough to stop me. I would die with this blow, the last of my inner strength. But I would succeed. I...
The blast rocked me and threw me. I was thrown through the air. My head hit solidly on something hard. A rock, a tree, I knew not what. All I knew was - I did not strike. This was not of me. I had failed.
*** Chapter 4
There was a sudden pain in my leg, a digging, burning pain. I stabbed downward, and sunk hard metal into something, a sickening half-sludge that made a thud like a ripe melon busting open.
In an instant, I invoked the power of light. My forehead blazed with radiance, and I saw. All around me. It was unbelievable.
I was surrounded by the dead. They were crawling forward on bloated limbs, torsos, as twisted skeletons covered in rags. Living corpses that walked on two legs with white, milk-rotten eyes that could not see. Everywhere, I could hear the click of bone on bone, of jaws coming together unnaturally with nothing between. Tongues were rotted out or missing.
At my hand, where I almost knelt, there was a corpse. My foot was above its stinking innards. I'd stepped in its putrefied belly, and it still clung to me. I had jammed my dagger through its rotten brain, and it had stopped moving.
Its arms were still dug into my legs. This “creature” did not have hands. The flesh came away from the fingers in sickening clumps, and left sharp talons of bone where fingers should be. And this army, this army of death, was slowly closing on me like a tightening noose.
In my stomach, there was a seething knot of bile that hit the back of my throat. It was hot and filthy. At the horrible stench and vision of this, I almost fell to my knees and emptied my stomach of its nothing contents.
I hadn't eaten. Almost foresight, now. I retched and gagged as I tried to see a way out.
There were no night bugs. There was the clicking and squinching of bone and rancid meat on bone. That was the only sound I heard, the only smell in my nostrils. Even carrion flies had fled the dead.
They had been closing in for many minutes. I would have been torn to pieces, save that I had stepped on one. In one.
It didn't matter. I swept my pack from my shoulders and I threw it at the nearest of them with great force, in one motion. It knocked down perhaps three of the slow, stupid corpses. My sword was in my hand and I turned about swiftly, striking out in a sweeping circle.
I cut through them like rancid butter. My blade swept through the stomach, chests, and skull of at least four of the walking dead. I tried to face other enemies, to get my bearings. My own light threw such twisted shadows, everything looked like it was moving.
Everything WAS moving. The zombies I had cut down, I felt one claw their way to my legs and dig. I took it in, my eyes and ears told me.
All of them, their movements were as jerking and stilted as string puppets. Their jaws came together with a series of loud clicks, as though afflicted with palsy, and not death. That was the noise I had heard, that i had mistaken for some more "natural" sound.
Only the one I'd cleaved his skull had ceased to move. Something squirmed in the fetid brains, hideous. Using the flat of my blade, I smashed at the corpses at my feet. Their skulls were split and shattered until the reeking, foul muck of their brains splattered on me.
Desperation and panic set in. I attacked randomly, killing in every stroke what was already dead, stepping over and around the woman I had been trying to save. These dead things, they did not bleed. I did not know if they could truly die, or if they would soon rise again.
I would be overwhelmed. My feet slipped in the gore that covered the mush that made up this swamp battlefield. There was no way I could keep fighting like this.
Praying for the power to come to me, I lashed out. Golden, killing arcs came off my sword and split the corpses wherever it touched. The flashes of light, they burned into my eyes. I struck again and again, and I could feel the aura of my power surround me as it was being used. I drew power from everywhere, trying to bring second death to these abominations.
It wasn't enough. Some crawling, severed constructs, disfigured with one arm or half a rotten skull, tried to crawl over the girl and feed on her flesh. I slashed two arcing, powerful slices into a V. It reached the ground and split on either side of the travois, leaving the corpses mangled and unmoving in its destructive wake.
One muscular, hunched monstrosity had reached for the woman and I severed its' arm completely. It fell on the woman seemingly unmoving, and I kicked it away. It's arm remained, occasionally twitching.
Nearly blinded, the power around me was coalescing into a bright radiance. My eyes adjusted from darkness to sudden daylight of my own creation. I couldn’t keep using this power, the power that was around me. I could not survive this to be destroyed. Hunted.
I cleaved my filthy sword deep into a tree and began yelling. Curses, epithets, a string of obscenity left my mouth at the foul undead. Almost as if they heard me, I saw their expressionless faces rise to me. I stood still. I had cleared a circle of the dead; it was again as though this had just begun.
On top of the travois, my feet on either side of this target I was protecting, I waited. There was a twitching feeling at my feet, as though some loathesome insects were trying to crawl away from me.
Putting my fists at my sides, I tried to channel power up. I could feel it within me. It welled up. I would release this force. I crossed my arms in front of my face defensively, and waited. Waited to set loose this power.
The dead shuffled toward me. They set their filthy hands upon me. They started biting me, but their teeth and claws could find little purchase on my sweat-covered hide. It didn't take, long, though. The horde started to drag me down. They raked tore painfully at my flesh.
Somehow, this pain was being turned to power. I was refilling me, the power that was inside my frame, not the energy, the essence, that surrounded me in my aura. I could use this inner power better, without fear of calling the hunt that tried to destroy me.
I would destroy.
Just as I was finally being pulled down, I placed my hand upon one foul creature. I released my burning soul. Natural as breathing.
It was incinerated utterly. Its skull dissolved in flame from my hands.
I struck out with fists and feet in all directions, a whirlwind of flame. I had never used a power like this, before. I was purifying these dead things. Suddenly, I was not surrounded - I was free to move and act.
There was another force fighting with me, fighting beside me. I could see a white blur at the edges of my eyes where I could not look - I was too focused on destruction to understand.
Crossing my left hand in front of my body, I pulled back my right hand beside my chest, palm open. A great cry came from the depths of my lungs, and I thrust forward with force in an open-handed strike.
A giant hand of fire sprang from my open palm and smote down the zombies in front of me with great force. I could see its' mark of passing on the trees. I pulled back my hand and struck again, to my left.
This giant hand, it obliterated everything in its passing. Unclean beasts. Ridding this world of them may be my purpose. I was rapidly burning through the undead and my own divine power, but I knew I was turning the tide of battle.
As I fought, I got better glimpses of this force that was fighting beside me. It was pale, ghostly. Perhaps I had summoned holy spirits. The spirit, it fought in one place. But it fought not as well as I... It was a mere distraction to the undead. Perhaps it was defending something here.
The girl, I remembered dimly. I had to... I had to smite this evil that threatened her. The spirit... it was, it looked like... It was her, somehow! She was losing.
I was drunk with raw power. It filled me and screamed for release.
There was no choice. I would knock them all down. I would lay the divine hand of the heavens on this accursed place. This was the last of my power, but I would deliver salvation.
I raised my arm above me, and cried out to whatever source my power came from, to make this my final act.
"By my own hand, I will purify this ground!"
My vision went red, and my lungs were chokingly filled with liquid. A surge moved through me, as though I was both thunderstruck and lightning at the same instant.
My aura, a brilliant circle of light, flared to sudden and great intensity as I began to call on the power around me. I began to see a shape, a form from force. I would bring this form out, call it forth.
Feeble corpses were not close enough to stop me. I would die with this blow, the last of my inner strength. But I would succeed. I...
The blast rocked me and threw me. I was thrown through the air. My head hit solidly on something hard. A rock, a tree, I knew not what. All I knew was - I did not strike. This was not of me. I had failed.