Archon of Strife: Segment Eight

There really was no hope of a surprise escape once the first charstrize had entered the burrow. Sarina was not the kind of arcane adept who could throw torrent after torrent of fire out the opening and she sure wasn’t going to physically overpower the coldblooded monster which had just taken hold of her hands and thrust its repugnant face into hers, tongue flickering in and out, nostrils exuding the horrific stench that indicated a filthy, bacteria-ridden mouth with each exhalation. The scaly visage was broken only by its black, beady eyes and long slit across the face where the mouth opened, but thankfully it was closed for now, probably a clue as to the charstrizes’ intentions of something other than a meal for Sarina and Kael.

"Kael! Help me! Sarina begged as loudly as she could, throwing her attention to her only hope now. Kael attempted to respond to her, hands wildly searching the dirt around him for a stick, a rock, or anything he could use against the menacing intruder. Not barely a moment later he grabbed a rock and hurled it at the serpentine creature just a few yards away, but in the dim shafts of light wafting in around the boulder it was difficult to aim and the rock nearly collided with Sarina’s face instead. It did, however, allow Sarina a split second of wiggle room as the charstrize thrust her slightly away so that it had something between itself and the projectile, which was all Sarina needed. Hand blazing an even deadlier hue and radiating an immense amount of heat, she clasped the wrist holding her own and felt the scaly skin virtually disintegrate inside her grip. An enormously high-pitched, whistling whine reverberated throughout the cavern as the giant lizard instantly recoiled and writhed in pain, rolling away from Sarina and towards Kael, who had already picked up another rock in each hand.

"Kill it! Sarina screamed over the painfully intense noise the charstrize was making. Kael would have done just that as he crouched over the wriggling beast, attempting to bring down each hand in succession into the charstrize’s face. But as his hands neared the wide-eyed monster suddenly Kael veered the rocks into the ground on each side of the creature’s head instead, immediately withdrawing his hands to himself to hug each shoulder while he scooted back frantically with a terrified expression. Sarina opened her mouth to yell in anger, frustration, and mostly utter bemusement, but just then another charstrize squirmed into the den and seized her glowing hand while covering her mouth and nose in the same motion with its other arm. This caused her to panic right away and send her other hand to her mouth to free her ability to breathe, beginning to heat up along the way much like her first hand. Unfortunately more than one charstrize was coming in this time, as Sarina found out as another pair of scaly, clawed hands wrestled her mobile hand into submission and forced her to the ground as a tail slithered around one of her legs and pulled it out from under her. Kael watched helplessly from as far in the corner as he could get while Sarina stared at him through hazing eyes, her consciousness slowly slipping away while she fought to pull air in through the tight hold over her mouth and nose. But Kael could only see the shock and terror from the morning at Daldenvale when he looked at the lizard writhing in agony and clawing at its melted skin. All the blood that came from the thug he killed as the body slid across the ground, the look on peoples’ faces, the feeling of having nowhere to run and the despair that invaded his dreams the night after. It all flooded into his mind and streamed across his vision while he huddled farther into the corner and tears began running down his cheeks.

In another few seconds it was over as the boulder moved a bit more to accommodate the charstrizes’ departure with Sarina and then was slid back in place to leave Kael in darkness and silence once more. Almost darkness, that is: Kael eventually stopped rocking back and forth in his balled-up state of terror, knees hugged to his chest, and upon his eyes beginning to adjust to the darkness he realized that there was some sort of light in the den because he could still barely make out the walls. As he closed and opened his eyes, taking several deep breaths, he assured himself that he could really see and that he wasn’t completely losing his mind to trauma. When he opened his eyes again after holding them closed for several long moments the small source of illumination was actually right in front of him, a mere three feet away at most. Kael leaned forward onto his hands and knees and cautiously approached the source, a small crystal emitting a faint glow of cyan and viridian mixed together. It seemed to be actually growing from the ground itself and was more reflective than translucent, causing Kael to look upon his own reflection as he gazed into the crystal. Despite it being himself looking back, the first person Kael saw was Sarina, her face as she lost consciousness just a minute ago now appearing in his mind once again. The most disturbing aspect of the whole development was that even though Kael felt horrible guilt at not saving Sarina or killing the charstrize, and though he felt remorse for all the people who suffered in Daldenvale, and though he now was terrified and uncertain about his future at this point, something inside him, some twisted part was enjoying it. Somewhere he felt a part of him reveling in it all and it scared him more than anything else he had known until now. With each obstacle and setback it seemed to feel a little stronger and more dominant, going against everything he had been taught and would expect to feel. It tore at him inside just as it hurt to think about everything that kept going wrong.

After gazing at the crystal a while longer Kael began to wonder why Sarina or himself hadn’t discovered this earlier. It was possible that it was just buried in the dirt and got uncovered during the struggle, but even the tiniest glow would have been visible in the pitch black darkness of the den. Kael reached out to touch it and realized then that the thin lines running down several of its facets were not part of the crystal, as he had mistakenly assumed. As his fingers felt the substance to actually be liquid he brought the fluid on his fingertips up to his eyes and rubbed his fingers together. It only took a second for realization to dawn upon him; it was the blood from the charstrize Sarina had melted the skin off. Kael considered for a moment what the correlation could be before wiping his fingers off on the small crystal instead of himself or the dirt around him. Sure enough, only a few seconds later the crystal was glowing brighter and on more facets in response to the blood, leaving Kael to wonder what malicious properties something that thrived on blood could harbor. Instead of leaving his mind to wander again, however, knowing it would inevitably revisit one of the many tormenting ordeals of late, Kael began to dig around the crystal with his fingers to see if there were more around. Though it chilled him to think of lighting his burrow prison with more of the blood on the ground, the macabre plan would at least allow him a small boon in defending himself when the lizards came again for him. But in a continuance of bad luck Kael had almost come to expect at this point, rustling and scratching from outside became audible once again before Kael had much opportunity to investigate the crystals further.

Suddenly all of the paltry courage he had worked up while formulating his defensive strategy waned as the boulder began to shift at the entrance. Kael quickly turned himself around so that his back was to the crystal and his front toward the entrance. This time the charstrizes were a little more prepared, not only sending in two of their number to retrieve their human captive, but bringing crudely woven ropes and a net as well. On all fours the creatures slithered in, perfectly suited to the claustrophobic dimensions of the den in this manner, causing Kael to involuntarily flinch and scoot backwards as they scurried towards him. In doing so he unintentionally slid over the crystal and sliced a long, painful gash across his buttocks and thigh. For some reason the charstrizes stopped a few moments after this, each cocking its head this way and that and releasing strange hisses to the other. Kael stared at them wide-eyed while he wondered why they had stopped before noticing a hot sensation in his left leg. When he looked down to see what the cause was he saw his pantleg soaked through with blood from the dart wound above his knee which seemed to have torn open again. But beyond this there was something else that immediately drew Kael’s attention: his butt was glowing.

The light from the entrance hid this fact from Kael until he averted his gaze downward to examine his leg, but now Kael knew for sure that there was more than just one lone crystal as the floor beneath him glowed with an aquamarine hue, most likely fueled by the blood from his open wound and new gash alike. The charstrizes didn’t spend much time debating with one another before advancing again, albeit more slowly this time, gripping their ropes in a menacing manner.

"No, it’s not magic!" Kael shouted while he hastily began scooting back the last foot of room he had before reaching the wall behind him, now fearful for his chances of not being harmed or knocked senseless as he realized the charstrizes thought he was fighting back like Sarina had. This only seemed to embolden the lizards unfortunately, for one readied its net while the other brought its legs together underneath itself and sprung at Kael. This time, however, Kael wasn’t about to freeze while the reptile attacked, not with it coming straight for him. He barely managed to roll to the side as the creature finished its pounce, consecutively becoming ensnared in the net that its partner had intended to envelope Kael with. The free charstrize moved forward to pull off the net but instead stopped after crushing something beneath its feet. It stopped moving for a moment as it examined its right leg, which had evidently broken a crystal and gone straight into the ground where the crystal was. Now together, both charstrizes shot Kael a spiteful look and hissed toward the entrance before resuming their struggles. They were both next to each other and clawing all over the ground, one attempting to dig out its leg and the other to rip through the net. This left Kael with the obvious option, to run away to the best of his ability. Alas, much to his dismay, another couple charstrizes began to slither in on all fours through the crawlspace, crowding up the den and leaving him with truly nowhere to go.

When finally cornered Kael decided it was time to go with a fight. And while not capable of anything that would likely save him now, the only option left was to inflict as much damage as possible before they brought him down, as he certainly had no intention of just laying down to die. Kael turned from the two oncoming lizards, barely able to crouch in the small confines of the burrow. He saw his best target to be the lizard encumbered in the net and moved toward it as quickly as he could with the intention of kicking its face in to the best of his ability. He almost succeeded too, if not for one of the new charstrizes jumping onto him as he reached his intended target. But while Kael’s surprise faded and his thoughts raced to the conclusion of his demise finally being upon him something strange happened; the ground under the trio collapsed as they all collided to what sounded like dozens of unsupportive crystals shattering and giving way underneath them. A sudden sense of vertigo prevailed while Kael’s stomach began to do backflips and in another long eight seconds his body came to an intensely jolting and sudden stop.

He would have laid there until everything stopped hurting if so much dirt hadn’t been falling from above, accompanied by the occasional rock or two and what sounded like the clawing and hissing of the other lizards trying not to follow their partners and get back into the den. Instead Kael rolled over a few times until his shoulder was stopped by a tall and hard surface, which he saw to be a giant crystal as the chamber began to glow. Kael stood up to look around, suddenly struck by wonder as the underground cavern was revealed before him. Dozens of crystals and stalagmites lined the floor in random arrangements, many of the former now emitting subtle hues of blue and green as their smaller counterparts had in the den above. What was causing this was strangely enough the same thing that had saved Kael’s life. Blood spattered over many of the crystals and flowed around the bases of others, coming partially from the charstrize that had jumped on top of Kael, which was now very much dead and suspended several feet off the ground, gored prominently in three places by giant crystals rising from the ground. The other charstrize had obviously broken Kael’s fall, so much so to the point that its head was smashed into the rocky floor and the rest of its body in much the same shape, though still caught in the net. Kael rubbed a few sore places and he stood up on shaky legs to look up at where they had fallen from. It felt like he and his assailants had actually slid down a short chute in the ground before their fall, and Kael was inclined to believe this even though he hadn’t really been aware of what was happening what with two other creatures struggling with him during the time. Still, he reasoned, if they had been falling for the full length of how long they had been a mobile conglomeration of bodies following the collapse of the ground then it would be more than just highly unlikely that any of them would have survived.

"It’s a wonder I’m alive at all," he said in a small voice to himself. "And without even a broken bone?" Kael searched himself over after saying this to confirm his question to no one in particular.