The Angaran Chronicles: The Ritual by BAD Agar (books like beach read .txt) 📕

A scream erupted from Sillette. 'Don't...be...stupid.'

She lost her words into pain soaked writhing and shrieking.

'This is like nothing...ever. Ever. Seen. She can't, do anything and...I know...I...she won't.'

'H-how?'

'It...doesn't matter-'

She screamed again as her feet finally disappeared and it continued up her legs. 'Please, Alathis. You can't...imagine...agony. You have to...put me down."

'I can't do that. You're not a dog.'

'You have to. Please...hurry, I can't stand it.'

Alathis looked down at his sword, clenching his fists and teeth.

The screams had now ascended into something indescribable. They must've been from the others who were going through the same hell as Silette, how she could keep from screaming as much as them was beyond Alathis. His admiration for her somehow grew even more.

He fell to his knees beside her. 'You have to hold on, Silette. We can get-'

'No,' she said and clutched his collar, pulling him, so they were face to face. 'No one can save...'

Her words disappeared into gasps that hissed through her brilliant teeth.

'Not even king...Harlen himself. This is new, like nothing...we've...seen. No one can save me...no one...but you. Please...do this for me.'

Alathis' tears dropped onto her face and then the words he'd wanted to tell her for years burst from his lips. 'I love you, Silette.'

Despite all her agony, she smiled. 'I know you...do.'

Then she pulled him into a kiss, Alathis' first kiss. Her lips were softer, warmer than he could've ever imagined, like the softest, lushest marshmallows in existence. It sent a new, incredible warmth flooding into him and new strength, but also a stinging, longing pain when he realised it'd never happen again.

He pulled away and stood. Retrieved his sword and rose it, tip aimed at her heart.

'First, promise, Alathis,' she gasped. 'Promise...you'll go...the Ritual.'

'Why?' he said. 'Why do you care so much?'

'B-because, you'll be a great Hunter. I know you'll...live. Be one, one in...five.'

'I-I promise, I will, Silette. I swear it.'

'I-I'm sorry,' said Silette. 'You have to do...this. But if you can...do this, you can do anything.'

'I'm sorry, Silette.' He meant it in two ways. He was sorry he hadn't confessed his feelings sooner. He was sorry he couldn't do this earlier.

Then he plunged his sword through her heart.

Alathis collapsed and curled against the wall then fell into a hideous, shuddering, weeping, hyperventilating madness. His gasps echoed through the featureless corridor, and sometimes sporadic moans and whines would breakthrough. His chest throbbed with agony. Agony which crashed through him like a tsunami. For what felt like hours, he couldn't move, couldn't think.

The memory broke apart, and Alathis found himself back in the sparring room, facing his reflection in the large mirror on the western wall. He couldn't remember turning to face it.

Tears still accosted his face. Tears he wiped away with a sleeve, but they only abated for a second.

Five years ago he couldn't recall walking through those corridors and back to the common room of that coven. Everything was a haze until he tripped on something and looked to find it was Torvion. The dwarf lay on his back and had a huge, ragged hole through his chest that Alathis could see the floor through. Alathis' boots sloshed in the dwarves' pooling blood. But he didn't react at his rival's death. Neither could he react when he noticed the stuff which seemed like ash coating the floor. He was unable to feel anything at all.

He carried on into the common room, and it was then when he heard the shouting.

There Alathis found teacher Telric kneeling over an injured, ugly human male wearing dark orange robes, who sat against the wall. His scalp was shaven and wreathed with tattoos of swirling serpents the same colour as his attire. The man's skin was a sickly, inhuman orangish hew. Ugly black veins bugled throughout like large, pulsating like giant leeches.

'Who are you?' said Telric, the human Hunter had his hands wrapped around the man's collar. 'Who do you work for? Why? Why did you do this? Why!'

A laugh bubbled from the man's mouth, and orange ichor ran down his chin, soaking his robes. His grinning maw was made up with sharpened teeth. He wasn't a vampire. Alathis had no idea who or what he was. But the term 'cultist' sprang into his thoughts.

'How did you find us?' said Telric. 'How did you get through the Sanctuary shield?'

In the back of his deadened mind, Alathis wondered that too. The Sanctuary Shields were meant to be impassible, impregnable. Created centuries ago by King Harlen of Valandri, they projected a shield that not only hid the covens from sight but also prevented anyone or anything sensing the auras of those within.

'Do you actually think I would tell you that?' said the cultist. 'You will never know anything, Hunter.'

Then he said something in a language Alathis never heard before. Every grating syllable sent painful shivers through Alathis' body and set his toes and fingers tingling. It made him feel like someone had reached into his chest and torn out his two top ribs. The words, if that word could even be used to describe it, was like nothing no human no elf or dwarf should ever utter. It was animalistic, alien. Eldritch.

Despite being unable to understand it, thankfully, Alathis remembered all the cultist said in clarity which seemed to defy all conventions of memory, and somehow, somehow he knew how they were spelt. That terrified him more than anything else that'd happened that horrid night, even more than the utterance itself.

What the cultist said was...

Cathanso'l lotogu'uil shosh'gollab coqu.

Shen shoulaq f'regeth tholok

Keekaslah p'thulle

Chos'choloth

And during the rare times Alathis would think over these words, he began to understand them

Alathis stumbled. Telric reeled, and the senior Hunter clutched his ears.

Suddenly the cultist's head exploded. His dark orange, brackish blood and brains coated Telric and everything else within about a two-metre radius.

Telric stood, wiping the crap off his face with a curse, then his attention snapped to Alathis.

'Alathis. What are you doing here? Get to the dorms with the other neophytes. Now.'

Alathis flinched, and he couldn't fight the onset of tears.

'What? What's wrong?' said Telric.

'I-I-I'

He'd told Telric everything; it'd all flooded out like the orange blood from the cultist's mouth.

Alathis shook away the memory.

Only a few hours after Alathis' confession, Alathis, the seven other surviving neophytes, including Karetil and Telric, the last living teacher. Abandoned that coven and walked west for fifty kilometres, through the thick, humid Amartisian forest. Before coming to this coven. Alathis could barely recall most an of that journey too.

'I miss you, Silette,' he said, his attention falling to the hardwood floor. 'I miss you so much.'

'One in five,' the words whispered into his ear, causing Alathis to straighten and look in the mirror.

What he saw standing behind him, froze him in place.

He started to hyperventilate; the mirror showed his eyes widen, his teeth clench into a rictus that crinkled his youthful face into looking forty years older.

'Y-y-y-you're...'

'Dead?'

She reached to her chest and in one tug and with a sickening slurping sound, pulled the blade out. Blackish orange, spew-like blood seemed to grow from the ugly gaping wound, splattering all over Alathis' back, soaking his tunic. It froze him, causing the cloth to cling to his skin.

'Only one in five live, Alathis,' said the pale, undead thing that looked like Silette. 'You shall not be one of them.'

She slashed for his neck with a blade still coated in the brackish blood.

Time seemed to slow and in that split second Alathis knew this was life and death. He fought the fear, pushed it down into his guts, drew his sword, spun and stopped her slash.

To his surprise a 'clang!' Echoed through the training room. He wielded his old sword. The sword coated in red blood.

Silette's blood.

'How-?'

He was interrupted by Silette withdrawing her blade then stabbing for his stomach. Alathis waited for the last millisecond before sliding aside. The tip of her sword pierced into the mirror.

Expecting the glass to shatter Alathis darted away, but as he turned, the glass began, yawning cracking.

Silette cut her blade out, yet the mirror still didn't shatter.

'What the hell?' Alathis gasped.

Silette spun to face him, a dead smile on her face. She slashed at his knee, forcing him to slip back, then plunged her sword at his chest. Alathis was barely able to parry it away.

She launched into a flurry of thrusts and slashes which forced Alathis onto the back foot. He'd improved since their fight five years ago, and even then he'd outclassed her. But not now, this Silette's skill rivalled his.

All the while the mirror continued to crack and break.

Once it reached the mirror's edges, the cracking continued, through the walls, the floor and ceiling.

'What the?' he gasped while weaving a cut. He parried her backswing then side-stepped a stab.

The creaking sound suddenly intensified and the cracking accelerated.

It shook the room, causing Alathis to stumble.

'This is a nightmare,' he said. 'It has to be a nightmare.'

Silette smiled. 'It is no nightmare.'

Then the room around them- shattered.

 He fell with a yell, along with bits of hardwood floor, white concrete wall and ceiling. For some reason, the dummies and weapons were in shards, too.

It all rained through a featureless white nothingness.

Alathis screamed but only dropped for a few seconds before his feet found a large chunk of floor and somehow his balance.

Silette flew at him, still with that smile. He threw himself aside a split second before she landed, embedding the sword to the hilt in the wood.

Alathis stood as Silette pulled it out and spun, slicing for his throat. He leaned back and its edge missed by a hair's width.

'You are holding back,' Silette said as she cut for his knee with the back-swing a stroke he parried away. 'Good, it will allow me to dispense judgement sooner. You were always a fool.'

Alathis swallowed, a war waged through him.

She leapt into a downward vertical slash he slid aside. Like lightning, she pivoted into a horizontal cut. He ducked.

'Please,' he said while stepping to gain some space. 'I-'

'You do not wish to fight?' said Silette. 'But you do not wish to face justice, either.'

Alathis frowned. 'Justice for what? Killing you?'

'Don't be such a fool.'

And still, the slab of the floor fell. Alathis knew it was falling despite being able to stand on it despite how it dropped through the white nothingness. The huge balling within his stomach screamed it.

He glanced over his shoulder and saw a smaller shard of wall