I shook myself and moved on, a wide sweep of my radiant blade hurling back the grounded birds and towering humanoid that lay before me, clearing the path to the mist laden gate. I knew not what lay beyond, only that I lacked choice; face the Darkness and destroy it, or avoid it and live forever snared by the eternal cycle. I hesitated not a moment more, passing through the curtain of mist and brandishing my weapon at the beast looming beyond.

The Cleric Beast -its name blazing through my mind as had the Werewolves before it- rose upon powerful legs, and tipped its entire body toward me, striking the earth with thunderous force; shaking the stones and nearly hurling me like a twig grasped in the mighty arms of a raging tempest. Seeing my opportunity, I lunged: my blade crunching against its jutting ribs and skittering aside as if it were steel not thinly clad bone that I had struck. Striding back, I avoided another blow from its titanic fist, and flicking my weapon back into its shorter form, I pivoted around the curled fingers, slashing first the broad wrist, then the bared throat beyond.

Now, it was pained, and with pain came anger. Even as it reeled, it swiped with a palm nearly rivaling my own size, striking me like a crumbling mountain, and grinding my fragile body across the far less frail stones. Agony flared, yet its fire sustained me. I leaped to my feet, and dashed past its kneeling frame, my keen blade biting into its flank. No sooner had it pivoted to pursue me than I had already circled it once more, striking its unprotected back and carving a dark gash across its ashen hide.

Its howl of frustration and rage seemed mighty enough to sunder stone if not the heavens themselves, rolling forth like a peal of thunder laden with divine power and primordial rage. Yet it was here that it erred on final time: I twisted beneath its chin, and drove my hand through flesh and bone, wresting its foul heart from its fouler mount, and crushing it with fingers of iron.

The Cleric Beast crumpled, and with a thin, puling wail breathed its last. I had triumphed here, struck the Darkness and gained its attention. There was no turning back now.

"Well done!" Or'do laughed heartily as he dragged himself from the stones, answering the call of my bell. "The first blow has been dealt, let us be swift lest they return it."

I nodded. "I know not the way, yet we can only stumble blind so long before we happen upon the proper course."

"No need." Flaring Cinder, he took one step... and looked disappointed. "Oh yeah."

"Onward?"

"Onward."

We strode on, yet we need not pass from from that gate of fog, before again the servants of darkness were upon us. Thralls of shadow swarmed over flagstones, their blades filling the air with steel's hollow song. I felt myself slip away, felt my consciousness be devoured by the flames of bloodlust, numbing my wounds and quenching the fires of exhaustion that raged in my weary arms.

It seemed not a moment had passed before we stood at the next door of fog, panting and gasping, yet exhilarated. If pressed, I would still be unable to recall our path, only that it ended with us sodden in foul blood, while our own still coursed through our veins, and that when we had arrived, the thrilling fury did not relent. Whether the Cinder fed from our exploits, or damned them, I could not say; only that perhaps this disorienting fixation on the hunt, was inscribed upon our very souls, and whether consciously or not, we yearned for those silent rules' fulfillment.

Hunched among the tombstones, Father Gascoigne raised eyes that shone like pools of oil set alight, and regarded us evenly, then with fury. Then, Or'do and I were upon him. My vision wavered, a pall of crimson swallowing my sight and a flare of forbidden thrill throbbing through my breast. I shook myself, glancing over at Or'do who was quite merrily in the intoxicating presence's thrall. Sudden insight seized me: this passion that dulled wit and burned away caution, was no creation of the Flame. This was the touch of some sick, twisted presence loyal only to the Dark, and with this knowledge, I defied it.

Father Gascoigne slashed wildly, yet his fate was already sealed in the blood that wept from a thousand thousand gashes. He crumpled, and Or'do stood triumphant, his eyes seething with dark ecstasy. I shook my head slowly, no good will come of this.

With supreme effort, I snared my sanity and bound it to me. Yet as we strode, laying about with vicious blows that tired him little, yet drained me of what little strength remained, I felt trepidation sweep over me like a mantle of frost. Or'do however, spared not a thought toward his state, rather it seemed he delighted in the power that came of allowing the presence unfettered command.

Then, its hold was shaken: we strode from shelter into the sickly light of a foul sky, and the flickering radiance of smouldering pyre, yet no sooner had we lain waste to those before us, than a stream of bullets was raining down, punching a thousand holes into my trailing leg as I rolled aside, and spraying Or'do's entrails across the stones in a fine scarlet mist. He crumpled slightly, then bellowing in challenge, sprinted toward the tower from which our foe took bead upon us, and unleashed another hellish barrage.

'No Or'do wait!" I called, charging after him, seeing too late that the clearing into which we burst, was littered with barrels promising to bathe the world in liquid fire, if struck even obliquely. Or'do bounded on, heedless of my warning, and when that hail of bronze again rattled against the stones, he was engulfed in flame that even this almighty frenzy could not mute.

His screams burned through me as the flame burned through him. Even in our world, fire does not sustain us when it dances over our undead flesh, yet here, the befouled inferno devoured him with fiendish ease. He perished then, yet immediately lunged back into my world, erupting from his own corpse in a flare of darkness; an explosion painted by colorblind artist, a spray of tar that fueled the flames.

Staggered through the curtain of fire, he passed into the dark chamber beyond. With greater caution, I leaped from shelter to the tempest of bullets, rolling thrice and coming up in a frenetic sprint that carried me across a bridge of planks, and into the stone building that loomed beyond.

"Something is wrong." Or'do murmured. "I feel not myself, my mind not my own."

"I know. The Darkness senses us, knows of us, despises us. It clouds our minds and hastens our hearts in a ploy that intoxicates as well as endangers."

Or'do nodded. "No more." He flared his Cinder, and in response, the Darkness swelled around us. He strode, burning away the shadows, and carrying us both to the gate of fog that lay countless leagues and even more countless foes beyond. No sooner had we emerged, than he was crumpling to the earth, kneeling heavily with hands folded atop his axe's pommel, and blood spilling over his lips.

Astonished, I took in the craggy earth and jutting bonfires. "I thought  this place refused the Cinder"

"I does." Or'do panted. "That is how I moved us; flaring the Cinder repelled the Darkness, and permitted me a channel bore. The same result from vastly different endeavors." He concluded, eyeing me expectantly.

"Forgive me, Or'do. I do not understand."

"Me neither!" Or'do laughed heartily, then gasped and coughed, leaning forward with hands on knees and stomach convulsing. Dark and foul, tendrils of blood coursed over his parched lips, and splattered against the stones.

"Or'do!" I shifted helplessly, uncertain whether touching him would only intensify his suffering.

"Using the Cinder here travels in the company of grave consequence." He straightened, slashing a forearm over his befouled mouth. Waving toward a deep scarlet beacon that rested atop a hillside to our left, he rasped: "Summon whomever that it is, we cannot fight this beast without help."

I nodded, and reaching for a corroded bell, stained with the centuries it had weathered, I strode toward the pool of sickly light. Long and frail, my clarion call rang out, and from a pool of shadow, crawled our ally: Alfred with hammer of grey slung over his shoulder, and the blighted fire of madness keen in his eyes. That same light had consumed my comrade not so long ago, and for our immense will, I felt that it would soon seduce us again.

 

 I lowered my shoulder, and strode through the wisps of mist that clung and writhed, pleading in silent voices for me to reconsider, to retreat while I still could. Now, battered and wounded, my heart sheared in two by grief's glacial blade, I recall their unspoken warning often; perhaps I should have listened.

The monster lunged, its cowl of scarlet flesh rippling grotesquely, its claws of glinting steel fading into an indistinct blur as it struck; I retreated before its assault, giving ground readily and daring not pause even for the most desperate of blows; to so much as stutter now, was to sign Death's warrant. Or'do smashed his slender blade against its protruding ribs, striking a damp note from the monster's abdomen. It pivoted, slavering jaws gaping wide in a deafening howl of furious hunger.

No sooner had it turned, than I was already moving, sliding beneath its crooked, emaciated legs, and dragging the razor edge of my battered sword against the sickly flesh that drooped and quivered along its belly. I did not pierce deep, yet I earned its attention nonetheless. My comrades showered in in steel, blades biting deep into its body, and helpless, battered, overcome with anger that it could not release, that monster surged to its feet, rising upon twisted hind legs, its foul muscle bulging like braided steel beneath the thin pall of sickly skin.

Clotted and revolting, strands of poison exploded outward from its flesh, showering us in ropes of filth, piercing our skin and fouling our blood. I retched and crumpled forward, poison thick in my veins.

"Take this!" Or'do did not wait for me to so much as glance his way, merely shoving an antidote between my lips as he passed. "Rise, Aleorn. We've prey before us!" I saw again that frenzy in his eyes, yet this time knew that it was he who ruled that mighty body.

His hammer swung in a broad arc, turning the air to a deafening malestrom as like the blade of lightning a tempest coughs forth, it struck the monster's flank, crushing bone and throwing the beast to its knees. Turning, using the weapon's own momentum to augment his own, he met its weak charge -a pitiful scrabbling of useless back legs that merely turned its face toward him- with a second, even more powerful blow that resonated through the cavern with a horrible, sickening crunch somewhere between autumn leaves ground beneath irreverent heel, and the moist hiss of a boot caught in mud's greedy grasp. It had not time in this world to howl or yelp, merely slumped to the flagstones and lay motionless until light blazed out from its ravaged frame, and it returned to the nothingness from whose foul womb it had sprung.