03-06-2015, 03:12 PM
Just like that, the Spartan had revealed that his increasing complexity would never cease to amaze the sorcerer. In a matter of seconds, Shang’s accomplice had gone from controlled and hardened to confused and lost. Atelos was the picture-perfect case of ‘never judge a book by its cover.’ Someone who at first site appeared to be a cookie-cutter soldier from the pinnacle of classical Greece had, overtime, been revealed to be an individual with power over flames and a tendency to suffer great mood swings.
“I… I ask again, Sorcerer,” Atelos stammered, his eyes wide with confusion as he pulled himself up off the ground. “What has happened?”
“So you don’t recall anything?” Shang inquired as he eyed the shelf to ensure that it wouldn’t be moving anytime soon. With the blood coming out from under the door, there was a slim chance it might slide around, and he didn’t want to deal with anymore screeching monsters for the time being. “You recall nothing that has transpired?”
“Only the nurses and the abominable creature that attack my group and I shortly after we departed the lobby. What has become of those men and women?”
“Dead, Atelos. You informed me of their deaths over the walkie about a half hour before we met back up in the boardroom prior to those creature’s ambushing us from outside.”
The Spartan shook his head. “I fear that I may have been compromised.”
What the hell does that mean? Shang furrowed his brow. “Do you care to expand upon that?”
“I’m not sure I can,” Atelos muttered as he looked down at his fists. It almost seemed as if the Spartan was confused by his own body. If it hadn’t been for the man’s previous bouts, Shang would have thought him to be a simple-minded lunatic. The nature of these episodes, however, seemed to point to a more complex issue lying beneath the surface—something that Atelos was probably already aware of. The real question then became whether or not Shang would discover the truth naturally or through other means.
“I am sorry to hear that, Spartan,” Shang replied amicably as he walked away from the barred door and fished around in his pocket for the key to the infectious ward. “I want to follow up a lead… are you of sound enough mind to accompany me?”
Atelos shook his head, which was enough confirmation for Shang to turn around and start toward the nearby Infectious Ward. With any luck, the room wouldn’t have any large windows…
“DAMN BEAST!”
With a flash of lightning, the Day’Suis struck home, crushing flesh, muscle, and bone as it smashed the skittering monster into the pavement. When the head of the glowing hammer struck the street, it splintered the old asphalt, denting down the immediate zone of impact and causing a spiderweb of fissures to spread out from there.
Wasting no time and wielding the heavy weapon as if it were a foam mallet, Argento spun and slammed the broader side of the hammer head against a second attacker—a four-armed abomination with the head of an infant. Without so much as a whimper, the creature took the blast full across the chest and crumpled into an almost unrecognizable heap of ruptured flesh and shattered bones. With the street silent once more, the paladin lowered the weapon and glanced around. Aside from the two beasts he had just slain, there were upwards of twenty other mangled and battered corpses within eyesight. After his first encounter, they just continued to shamble or swoop in from the fog. It was almost as if they were drawn to the sound.
A block or so away, his companions lay dead—their bodies torn apart when they were ambushed once more by the flying creatures. It was in that direction that Argento now strode—his expression stern despite the pain he felt in his heart. How had he not known the folly of attempting to force their way back toward the wagons? Surely he shouldn’t have taken more time to assess the situation. Perhaps if he had, he would have known how silly it was to believe that they wouldn’t be walking into yet another ambush.
The kicker? The wagons weren’t even there anymore. Only a few trails from the wheels remained in the grass to mark where they had been pushed from the road and down the nearby grassy slope. From the street, the bottom of the hill was concealed in deep fog. Before he could allow himself to brazenly rush down into what would have surely been his own demise, the creatures had swooped back down from the skies, tearing and slashing with their beaks and claws. By the time he had armed himself properly, he was the only one left on his feet.
“I’m truly sorry,” Argento whispered to no one but himself as he approached the broken forms that lay in ensanguined heaps upon the aged tarmac. “I hope that your spirits rest in peace within the Sun’s embrace, and that you shall permit me use of your mortal shells.” The paladin lifted up the Day’suis and looked upon it as it began to shimmer with the warmth of the one true Sun. Rays of twinkling light wafted from its magnificent surface, and for a brief and fleeting moment, Argento swore he saw the fog overhead part to reveal his god incarnate.
“Feel the warmth of the Sun!”
A shockwave of energy erupted outward from the man, flipping cars and shattering the windows of nearby buildings. When that subsided, the tendrils of energy emanating from his hammer shot forth as if they were alive. They vanished into the corpses of his fallen allies, and within moments, the freshly dead rose once more. Gone were their mortal shells of flesh and cloth. They had been replaced by the warm, glowing light of the Sun and encased within protective coats of shimmering armor. Although the sunlight entities possessed no facial features, Argento felt their gaze upon him.
“May we cast a little sunlight into this dark hamlet.”
Atelos still seemed a bit off, but Shang Tsung wasn’t the type of man to pry into someone else’s life. Or at least do so in a deliberate and straight-forward fashion. The Spartan kept his thoughts to himself as the pair crossed the second floor and made their way over to what was labeled the ‘Infectious Ward.’
“What do you hope to find within this room, Sorcerer?”
“I don’t know, but I was reading a journal kept on a computer in another examination room. Apparently they kept some secret patients here… they had some degenerative disease that was highly contagious. The board of executives here was collaborating with some people from the hospital to make the whole situation just fade away.”
“And you want to poke your nose into other peoples’ messes?”
“I want to know why people would do this… I want to know what’s so important that they have to cover it up.” It was a lie. A damn good one… but nevertheless a lie. To be completely honest with the Spartan would require a conversation about biological weapons, which was something that would require more than a sentence or two to explain.
“You have these strange bouts of altruism, Sorcerer.” A quick glance revealed the tiniest smirk on the Spartan’s face.
“And you have these strange bouts where you act differently and then forget all about it.” Shang likewise made sure his smug grin was present as he fished for the key. Once he unlocked the door, he cautiously twisted the handle and gave the door a gentle shove to allow it to swing open without making any noise. It was only when the door was already fully open that he realized Atelos hadn’t bothered to move out of the way.
“What? It’s an empty room, Sorcerer. You act as if you were expecting to find a Minotaur or Charybdis lurking inside.”
I wonder if I’m the only person in the Pale Moors who understands these references? Shang shook his head at Atelos’ remark. “Once bitten, twice shy. I had one of those nurses jump me because I wasn’t paying attention to what might be on the other side of a door.”
The Spartan shrugged his broad shoulders and walked into the room. As he crossed the threshold, his hands retrieved his shield and his sword. After a few steps, he turned around and shook his head once again. “Nothing here, Spartan.”
Shang scowled as he walked into the room. His finger found the light switch and threw it up, bathing the room in the pale yellow glow of dying florescent lights. It took him all of three seconds to confirm what the Spartan had said—the room was empty. It wasn’t just empty… it was immaculate. About half a dozen rooms lined the central hallway, and each of them looked as if they had just been built yesterday. After opening one of the containment rooms, Shang crouched down and could even see that someone had cleaned out the grime between the linoleum floor tiles.
“Someone purposefully did this,” Shang spoke as he stood up and walked to the back of the room, where a simple desk lay in the corner.
Atelos, who was poking around in the other room, glanced out of one. “Of course… is that not the purpose of slaves but to clean their master’s belongings?”
He couldn’t tell if that was more attempt humor or just the Spartan’s previous life shining through. Either way, Shang had to bite his tongue as he rifled through the little book that rest on the desk. As he could have imagined, it was missing about twenty pages that covered the exact timespan that the infected individuals would have been housed in the six nearby containment rooms. The most recent entry just stated—Rooms cleaned by maintenance staff. Outdated office equipment recycled. There was no reference to bodies being removed or any evidence at all that the Infectious Ward had been utilized for nearly a year.
“What is our next step, Shang?” Atelos inquired as the sorcerer shuffled to the end of the log. The Spartan watched as his associate tore out one of the last pages. “What is that?”
“A contact at the hospital… We’re going to head over there.”
“What of the paladin?”
Shang scoffed. “He can crawl into a hole and die if he hasn’t already. I couldn’t stand to listen to another stanza of ‘The March of Sunlight’. Argento can fend for himself.”
After stifling a laugh, the Spartan nodded his head. “All right,” he replied as the pair exited the room and started back to the first floor.
They managed to make it as far as the second-floor version of the lobby when the entire building seemed to shudder, causing both men to waver and nearly lose their balance. Shang opened his mouth to speak, but before he had a chance, the roof above their head started to crumble. At first, it was just chunks of plaster and wood that started to rain down on the pair, but after a few seconds, one of the many cross-beams that supported the roof came crashing down. The sorcerer dove as the heavy wooden beam slammed into the space between the two men and obliterated the floor. The hell? Shang was swift to his feet, but before he could get a bead on the location of his companion, the floor beneath his boots let out a heavy sigh as it started to tilt downward.
As the floor crumbled, instinct took over, and Shang threw himself forward onto the other side of the collapsing room. He landed on his knees, pushed down the searing pain that flared up in those joints, and launched himself toward the other end of the room. By the time he was back on his feet, he knew that the other half of the room was on the verge of collapsing, and a quick glance to the ceiling revealed another beam close to collapse.
“Over here, Shang!”
The sorcerer turned in the direction of the Spartan’s voice and saw his bulky form standing in one of the small corridors that led into the right wing of the building. With a grunt, Shang jumped as the floor gave way beneath his feet. A beat later—with an assist from the Spartan—the sorcerer was in the hallway and free from the now thoroughly collapsed room. The pair turned their attention to what had once been the lobby of the Sanitarium. What had once been a drab, unappealing room was now a heaping mass of dust, bricks, and wooden beams. A few pale beams of fog-choked light now shined down upon the twisted mess below them.
“Faulty building design?” The Spartan asked as he walked over and leaned against the wall. “Or do you think that was intentional?”
“I’m not sure, but this place is dangerous, even when there aren’t monsters around,” the sorcerer whispered as he noticed the wall start to quiver around Atelos. “Spartan!” Throwing a hand forward, Shang tried to grab the warrior, whose eyes went wide the moment the wall behind him suddenly stopped support his weight and instead moved to envelop him. The sorcerer got his hand around his ally’s deformed shoulder, but his strength failed to liberate Atelos, who sunk into the wall despite his own attempts to fight back.
With a final, defiant shout, the Spartan vanished into the wall, which reverted back to being a brick wall. Between Shang’s hand and the wall was the weathered skull of a reptile—the same one that rested atop Atelos’ shoulder. Unsure what it meant that the strange and ghoulish trophy had been left behind, Shang walked through the doorway to look at the other side of the wall where Atelos had once leaned against.
“Where are you, Spartan?” Shang asked aloud as he walked over to an open window and leaned his hands on the ledge while his eyes looked back into the fog-coated street courtyard.
He first heard the noise far in the distance, but in a matter of seconds, it spread across the entire area until it sounded as if he was standing in a room with the source of the horrible warbling.
It was an air raid siren.
“I… I ask again, Sorcerer,” Atelos stammered, his eyes wide with confusion as he pulled himself up off the ground. “What has happened?”
“So you don’t recall anything?” Shang inquired as he eyed the shelf to ensure that it wouldn’t be moving anytime soon. With the blood coming out from under the door, there was a slim chance it might slide around, and he didn’t want to deal with anymore screeching monsters for the time being. “You recall nothing that has transpired?”
“Only the nurses and the abominable creature that attack my group and I shortly after we departed the lobby. What has become of those men and women?”
“Dead, Atelos. You informed me of their deaths over the walkie about a half hour before we met back up in the boardroom prior to those creature’s ambushing us from outside.”
The Spartan shook his head. “I fear that I may have been compromised.”
What the hell does that mean? Shang furrowed his brow. “Do you care to expand upon that?”
“I’m not sure I can,” Atelos muttered as he looked down at his fists. It almost seemed as if the Spartan was confused by his own body. If it hadn’t been for the man’s previous bouts, Shang would have thought him to be a simple-minded lunatic. The nature of these episodes, however, seemed to point to a more complex issue lying beneath the surface—something that Atelos was probably already aware of. The real question then became whether or not Shang would discover the truth naturally or through other means.
“I am sorry to hear that, Spartan,” Shang replied amicably as he walked away from the barred door and fished around in his pocket for the key to the infectious ward. “I want to follow up a lead… are you of sound enough mind to accompany me?”
Atelos shook his head, which was enough confirmation for Shang to turn around and start toward the nearby Infectious Ward. With any luck, the room wouldn’t have any large windows…
***
“DAMN BEAST!”
With a flash of lightning, the Day’Suis struck home, crushing flesh, muscle, and bone as it smashed the skittering monster into the pavement. When the head of the glowing hammer struck the street, it splintered the old asphalt, denting down the immediate zone of impact and causing a spiderweb of fissures to spread out from there.
Wasting no time and wielding the heavy weapon as if it were a foam mallet, Argento spun and slammed the broader side of the hammer head against a second attacker—a four-armed abomination with the head of an infant. Without so much as a whimper, the creature took the blast full across the chest and crumpled into an almost unrecognizable heap of ruptured flesh and shattered bones. With the street silent once more, the paladin lowered the weapon and glanced around. Aside from the two beasts he had just slain, there were upwards of twenty other mangled and battered corpses within eyesight. After his first encounter, they just continued to shamble or swoop in from the fog. It was almost as if they were drawn to the sound.
A block or so away, his companions lay dead—their bodies torn apart when they were ambushed once more by the flying creatures. It was in that direction that Argento now strode—his expression stern despite the pain he felt in his heart. How had he not known the folly of attempting to force their way back toward the wagons? Surely he shouldn’t have taken more time to assess the situation. Perhaps if he had, he would have known how silly it was to believe that they wouldn’t be walking into yet another ambush.
The kicker? The wagons weren’t even there anymore. Only a few trails from the wheels remained in the grass to mark where they had been pushed from the road and down the nearby grassy slope. From the street, the bottom of the hill was concealed in deep fog. Before he could allow himself to brazenly rush down into what would have surely been his own demise, the creatures had swooped back down from the skies, tearing and slashing with their beaks and claws. By the time he had armed himself properly, he was the only one left on his feet.
“I’m truly sorry,” Argento whispered to no one but himself as he approached the broken forms that lay in ensanguined heaps upon the aged tarmac. “I hope that your spirits rest in peace within the Sun’s embrace, and that you shall permit me use of your mortal shells.” The paladin lifted up the Day’suis and looked upon it as it began to shimmer with the warmth of the one true Sun. Rays of twinkling light wafted from its magnificent surface, and for a brief and fleeting moment, Argento swore he saw the fog overhead part to reveal his god incarnate.
“Feel the warmth of the Sun!”
A shockwave of energy erupted outward from the man, flipping cars and shattering the windows of nearby buildings. When that subsided, the tendrils of energy emanating from his hammer shot forth as if they were alive. They vanished into the corpses of his fallen allies, and within moments, the freshly dead rose once more. Gone were their mortal shells of flesh and cloth. They had been replaced by the warm, glowing light of the Sun and encased within protective coats of shimmering armor. Although the sunlight entities possessed no facial features, Argento felt their gaze upon him.
“May we cast a little sunlight into this dark hamlet.”
***
Atelos still seemed a bit off, but Shang Tsung wasn’t the type of man to pry into someone else’s life. Or at least do so in a deliberate and straight-forward fashion. The Spartan kept his thoughts to himself as the pair crossed the second floor and made their way over to what was labeled the ‘Infectious Ward.’
“What do you hope to find within this room, Sorcerer?”
“I don’t know, but I was reading a journal kept on a computer in another examination room. Apparently they kept some secret patients here… they had some degenerative disease that was highly contagious. The board of executives here was collaborating with some people from the hospital to make the whole situation just fade away.”
“And you want to poke your nose into other peoples’ messes?”
“I want to know why people would do this… I want to know what’s so important that they have to cover it up.” It was a lie. A damn good one… but nevertheless a lie. To be completely honest with the Spartan would require a conversation about biological weapons, which was something that would require more than a sentence or two to explain.
“You have these strange bouts of altruism, Sorcerer.” A quick glance revealed the tiniest smirk on the Spartan’s face.
“And you have these strange bouts where you act differently and then forget all about it.” Shang likewise made sure his smug grin was present as he fished for the key. Once he unlocked the door, he cautiously twisted the handle and gave the door a gentle shove to allow it to swing open without making any noise. It was only when the door was already fully open that he realized Atelos hadn’t bothered to move out of the way.
“What? It’s an empty room, Sorcerer. You act as if you were expecting to find a Minotaur or Charybdis lurking inside.”
I wonder if I’m the only person in the Pale Moors who understands these references? Shang shook his head at Atelos’ remark. “Once bitten, twice shy. I had one of those nurses jump me because I wasn’t paying attention to what might be on the other side of a door.”
The Spartan shrugged his broad shoulders and walked into the room. As he crossed the threshold, his hands retrieved his shield and his sword. After a few steps, he turned around and shook his head once again. “Nothing here, Spartan.”
Shang scowled as he walked into the room. His finger found the light switch and threw it up, bathing the room in the pale yellow glow of dying florescent lights. It took him all of three seconds to confirm what the Spartan had said—the room was empty. It wasn’t just empty… it was immaculate. About half a dozen rooms lined the central hallway, and each of them looked as if they had just been built yesterday. After opening one of the containment rooms, Shang crouched down and could even see that someone had cleaned out the grime between the linoleum floor tiles.
“Someone purposefully did this,” Shang spoke as he stood up and walked to the back of the room, where a simple desk lay in the corner.
Atelos, who was poking around in the other room, glanced out of one. “Of course… is that not the purpose of slaves but to clean their master’s belongings?”
He couldn’t tell if that was more attempt humor or just the Spartan’s previous life shining through. Either way, Shang had to bite his tongue as he rifled through the little book that rest on the desk. As he could have imagined, it was missing about twenty pages that covered the exact timespan that the infected individuals would have been housed in the six nearby containment rooms. The most recent entry just stated—Rooms cleaned by maintenance staff. Outdated office equipment recycled. There was no reference to bodies being removed or any evidence at all that the Infectious Ward had been utilized for nearly a year.
“What is our next step, Shang?” Atelos inquired as the sorcerer shuffled to the end of the log. The Spartan watched as his associate tore out one of the last pages. “What is that?”
“A contact at the hospital… We’re going to head over there.”
“What of the paladin?”
Shang scoffed. “He can crawl into a hole and die if he hasn’t already. I couldn’t stand to listen to another stanza of ‘The March of Sunlight’. Argento can fend for himself.”
After stifling a laugh, the Spartan nodded his head. “All right,” he replied as the pair exited the room and started back to the first floor.
They managed to make it as far as the second-floor version of the lobby when the entire building seemed to shudder, causing both men to waver and nearly lose their balance. Shang opened his mouth to speak, but before he had a chance, the roof above their head started to crumble. At first, it was just chunks of plaster and wood that started to rain down on the pair, but after a few seconds, one of the many cross-beams that supported the roof came crashing down. The sorcerer dove as the heavy wooden beam slammed into the space between the two men and obliterated the floor. The hell? Shang was swift to his feet, but before he could get a bead on the location of his companion, the floor beneath his boots let out a heavy sigh as it started to tilt downward.
As the floor crumbled, instinct took over, and Shang threw himself forward onto the other side of the collapsing room. He landed on his knees, pushed down the searing pain that flared up in those joints, and launched himself toward the other end of the room. By the time he was back on his feet, he knew that the other half of the room was on the verge of collapsing, and a quick glance to the ceiling revealed another beam close to collapse.
“Over here, Shang!”
The sorcerer turned in the direction of the Spartan’s voice and saw his bulky form standing in one of the small corridors that led into the right wing of the building. With a grunt, Shang jumped as the floor gave way beneath his feet. A beat later—with an assist from the Spartan—the sorcerer was in the hallway and free from the now thoroughly collapsed room. The pair turned their attention to what had once been the lobby of the Sanitarium. What had once been a drab, unappealing room was now a heaping mass of dust, bricks, and wooden beams. A few pale beams of fog-choked light now shined down upon the twisted mess below them.
“Faulty building design?” The Spartan asked as he walked over and leaned against the wall. “Or do you think that was intentional?”
“I’m not sure, but this place is dangerous, even when there aren’t monsters around,” the sorcerer whispered as he noticed the wall start to quiver around Atelos. “Spartan!” Throwing a hand forward, Shang tried to grab the warrior, whose eyes went wide the moment the wall behind him suddenly stopped support his weight and instead moved to envelop him. The sorcerer got his hand around his ally’s deformed shoulder, but his strength failed to liberate Atelos, who sunk into the wall despite his own attempts to fight back.
With a final, defiant shout, the Spartan vanished into the wall, which reverted back to being a brick wall. Between Shang’s hand and the wall was the weathered skull of a reptile—the same one that rested atop Atelos’ shoulder. Unsure what it meant that the strange and ghoulish trophy had been left behind, Shang walked through the doorway to look at the other side of the wall where Atelos had once leaned against.
“Where are you, Spartan?” Shang asked aloud as he walked over to an open window and leaned his hands on the ledge while his eyes looked back into the fog-coated street courtyard.
He first heard the noise far in the distance, but in a matter of seconds, it spread across the entire area until it sounded as if he was standing in a room with the source of the horrible warbling.
It was an air raid siren.
![[Image: Shang.jpg]](http://www.omniverse-rpg.com/images/Shang.jpg)