Corruption Ate

Chapter 9
Underway


The six met at the Western Gate with the sun beginning its downward journey in the afternoon sky. While the architecture of this gate differed little from the Eastern one – even the guards looked exactly the same – the background was far removed. Where the Eastern Gate quickly branched off into the different canyons of the desert east of the city, the ground remained flat and mostly unbroken as it bled into sand, and then sand dunes in the distance. Blade could see winds ripping sand into off of the tops of those mounds, and then whipping them into vicious-looking dust devils.
Fakyr and Cloack looked little different, save a few things. Fakyr wore a heavy shirt and waist garment much like Sugumo's and Mugulo's. The shirt had a heavy, high collar that stretched up to covered his lower face. He had said it was for protection from the sun, but Blade almost didn't believe it. A race that lived closer to the sun than most any other life form would likely not need such protection, but then again, they lived high up, in a cold, cold place. They had never been in a desert, and Blade couldn't truly argue. The clothes under the decorative armor seemed cumbersome, though.
Cloack wore a sort of hat with cloth draping down around his shoulders. He, too, said that it was to protect him from the sun, and Blade truly did believe that as Cloack lacked the scales that Fakyr possessed. Blade was able to get Hides a decent breastplate, and Frost some clean adventurers' clothes. They were loose on her, light tan as was much in the desert city. Her plain black breeches were a darker tan, almost brown, and the leather jerkin Blade had procured for her fit her nicely.
Blade had even had his clothes repaired, but not before he had received a heavy reprimand from Sugumo. His shirt, torn and ripped from his detour to the mountains, had been tailored back together so completely, he had easily spent fifteen minutes just trying to find the seams. He still failed.
With his newly changed scythe on his back and his freshly donned friends beside him, he took the first step. The others fell into step behind him.
Fighting down his trepidation at not truly knowing how far he would have to go – or where he was going, for that matter – he found that he enjoyed the feeling of being a leader. He liked having the others follow him. Even Steve piped down to listen to him when he spoke. Hides and Frost, no matter what they might be arguing about, stopped to hear Blade's words. He couldn't possibly deny the ineffable weight his words carried, the indescribable power of his speech.
He almost smiled.
Cloack rushed up beside him, carrying a bundle of parchments. Blade almost stopped to gawk at him. Where had this youth, still fumbling with his turban, produced such volumes? Surely if he had placed them within his robes they would have been damaged, and such a mage, even a young one, would likely have prized knowledge too greatly to risk such a thing.
“What is it?” Blade asked, not once stopping to help the poor boy.
“I... it's...” Cloack finally sorted everything out, and singled a single parchment from the rest and stuffed those he didn't use into the folds of his robes. Still astonished at such a careless movement, Blade didn't stop, wondering if those robes had a few surprises up their sleeves. He pulled the parchment from its roll and held it before himself and Blade.
“It's just that... this area here,” Cloack pointed to a spot on the map he held. Upon the map, nearly at the very center, was a small dot labeled 'Medavesus.' The point that Cloack held his finger above was some distance west. “This area is inhabited by the Jocunds.”
“The what?” Blade asked, being sure to remain westward even while talking to this boy. The city began to grow small behind them.
“They are creatures that are extremely family bound. They never socialize with anything that is not a Jocund. They are also highly territorial. It's believed that this is a sign of intelligence, as they have been seen communicating with one another, coordinating attacks on intruders.”
“That's seen as intelligent?”
“Not the act of attacks, no, but the coordination and the communication. Any creature can attack, some even work together based on another's movements, but few can truly organize a true raid, an outright siege, even. There are stories of rare occurrences in which massive numbers Jocund organize into a blight, and ravage countrysides. Luckily, that's never happened in Tharsus, or the Empire. Still, we should be wary.”
Blade nodded at the possibly grim tidings. “Agreed. Should we tell them?”
“It would be prudent.”


* * * * *


That night, as they made camp weary and with sand in places there should never be sand, Blade sat beside the fire, looking over the companions. Hides and Frost lay in their bedrolls, not quite on opposite sides of the fire. Fakyr, tattered wings wrapped about him, sat at the edge of the firelight, the first watch of the night. His gaze was out to the dunes before them, his back turned to Blade. Though Blade could not see him, he knew Cloack to be at the opposite of the flickers cast by the flames. The sound of a pen scratching across a parchment could be heard from both Cloack and Fakyr. Blade knew Fakyr to be chronicling the day's events, thought he had little idea as to what Cloack could be writing.
And Steve curled in his bedroll as close to the fire as he could get without catching flame. Occasionally, he jerked or made loud noises, almost as a dog would in its sleep.
Blade gazed up at the stars and let his mind wander. He wondered why Xyrcan and Fakyr had been kind enough to continue speaking Blade's language. Wouldn't it have been easier to simply relay basic commands in Draconian? Blade smacked his palm against his forehead. He expected Fakyr to turn the moment he heard the sound, but no such thing happened and the camp became quiet again.
The spell of translation was still in effect!
He smiled to himself and wondered if perhaps he wasn't magic at all, that perhaps it was instead the spell that had altered his scythe. He gazed down at his now fearsome weapon, immediately disbelieving that claim. He had left the scythe behind before having the spell cast on him. He almost entertained the notion that perhaps Tyrassa had purposely tampered with it.
He smiled again, knowing that the truth would come soon enough. He glanced over his shoulder at Cloack, his back turned as well, gazing almost longingly at the stars above. He looked past Cloack, into the desert beyond, in the direction of Medavesus, now so distant it had disappeared over the horizon hours ago. He was proud of their swift and tireless progress, and was impressed at Hides' lack of complaints all day. He wondered if anything might have been wrong, if perhaps something had happened or been said to change his demeanor.
Still, with the young boy asleep, there was little point in waking him to ask so simple a question. He looked to Steve once again, wondering what possible life he and the maniac had once shared. He again felt a closeness, though reduced, but growing, as if it had always been there. Was it simply his personality forging a past as well as a present based only on what it had seen? Or was it, in fact, proof of what Steve had been saying all along? Again, the answer would come to Blade with time.
So the ignorant man merely laid his head upon his bedroll, turned toward the flames, and drifted into sleep.


* * * * *


Edge sat on the edge of his bed in his small, plain room. Despite his position inside his master’s organization, he was given a room barely eight feet long and only six feet wide. Equipped with a basic sink, an open lavatory, and an almost metal cot built into the wall, it would have kept any other man in a state of claustrophobia.
Not Edge. Not after so long in this place.
The ache in his chest was slowly dying away, the last remnants of his broken ribs. There was another ache there, though, deeper than any broken rib, than even the sharpest blades could ever cut.
He rose from his seat, determined not to fail his master. For if he did, he truly would have nothing left to live for. As he drew near to his door, it slid open silently and allowed him passage. He wandered through the halls, seemingly aimless, with no apparent goal in mind. It was, of course, a ruse to throw off any minion of the master who had been ordered to follow him. After he was certain he had lost any tail behind him, he took a sharp turn down a tunnel he knew well.
He slunk past the guards, who would have stopped and detained him on sight. Especially him. Only him. For he was not allowed in this area, and for a very good reason. He only came here on the rare occasions that his inspiration faltered, and had learned its defenses well.
He slithered through the large double doors at the end of the hall, and emerged into a large chamber, lined on all walls with tall, fluid-filled cylinders, large enough to hold the largest of men and Lamadan alike. Rows of the same cylinders filled the room, four to either side of Edge, perfectly arranged like a macabre parade. These tubes were used to contain those subjects that were intended to be preserved, or those who are used as ‘leverage’ against active subjects.
Like Edge’s sister.
Directly across from him, at the far end of the room, a small girl, no older than ten years, floated, suspended in the viscous fluid. She was kept in a state of stasis. She felt not the passage of time, and never once perceived Edge’s many visits to this very spot, just in front of the tube. Edge wanted to believe that perhaps all little Sarah was experiencing was an unusually long dream. Edge had to believe that. To think otherwise would be to suggest that perhaps Sarah was in pain, or would never again wake and that would crush his resolve yet further.
He lifted a hand, and pressed it against the polished glass. He wasn’t fearful of leaving any evidence, though, as he had no handprint to leave behind. The same was with his fingertips. He could leave no print, had no identity.
He leaned his forehead against the glass and closed his eyes. He remembered days before this, when a young Edge and his sister would play around their home. They had lived in Carsus, the capital city of Stormfront. And then, the master’s lackeys came.
They took Edge and his sister, and to force Edge’s compliance, they had taken his sister, and placed her here. He could do nothing, not now. He couldn’t even break the glass. Even if he possessed the strength, without properly shutting down the machines that kept her alive, the shock would kill her. If he tried to shut down the tube, he would have to do the same for the entire system of stasis pods. They would all be killed, and it would be entirely Edge’s fault.
He had to kill Blade. For the sake of his sister, he would do whatever was necessary.
Blade wheeled about, and snuck back into his room. When a servant came in to check on him, no doubt at the master’s behest, he grabbed hold of her neck, just below her jaw. Small black tendrils began to creep under skin from Edge’s hand.
Edge had to kill Blade.


* * * * *


Blade shouted as he woke, bolting upright in a cold sweat. He looked around rapidly, and calmed himself as quickly as he could. He rubbed his hands across his face, and looked around at the camp. Most of the companions had already risen, and they looked at him now with concern. He rose, somewhat shakily, to his feet. “I’m fine.”
“Another dream?” Frost asked. Blade nodded grimly.
Blade looked to the east, back to the city, still beyond his vision. The sky was alight with the pre-dawn light. He looked to the west, where the land was still under cover of darkness. He looked down to his scythe, tucked against the fire pit, now with blackened ashes, but no flames.
He reached down to pick it up. When his hand came to wrap about the strangely contoured shaft, however, an image flooded into his mind. It was a sunset, the previous night’s sunset, and it calmed him. Why would he have thought of such a thing at a time like that?
Still, he felt calmer. He thought little more of it, donned his armor quickly, and snapped his scythe into the reflex sheath upon his back. He looked to Steve, still curled up, now almost inside the fire pit. Blade stepped up behind him, and as an evil grin split his face, he kicked hard into Steve’s back, sending him into the pit.
Waking abruptly, Steve sputtered and shouted, cursed and groaned as he scrambled out of the mess of his bedroll and the burned logs. When he looked back at Blade, his shadow beginning to quiver on the ground beside him, Blade burst into laughter. Quickly, the others joined in as they each saw Steve.
His face was almost black as pitch, covered with soot and ashes. His blonde hair was similarly discolored, and his pout showed the pink inside of his lower lip, contrasting with the dark of his soot-covered face.
As he glowered at the troupe, however, he looked down at his own hands, and his expression softened. Soon, he began to chuckle as well, and then he was outright laughing by the time he was tossed a rag to clean up the soot. When he got it off of his face and most of it out of his hair, he tossed the soiled rag back at Frost.
“What about your clothes?” She asked, although the soot truly didn’t do much to change the color of Steve’s constantly black wardrobe.
“Simple fix.” Steve squeaked. He snapped his fingers, and immediately his clothing drifted into a black smoke, removing the soot, and any cover he had previously donned. The other five immediately turned away, groaning and moving to block the view with their hands. “Simpletons.” Steve muttered, and snapped his fingers again, bringing in wisps of shadows that condensed around Steve back into clothes, exactly the same as his previous outfit.
“How did you do that? That is magic I have never seen!” Cloack exclaimed.
“I call it Shadowmancy.” Steve ominously replied. “I’m the only one that can do it.” To accentuate his point, Steve’s shadow rose from the ground, and gained a three-dimensional image, leaning its shoulder against Steve. “Isn’t that right?”
The shadow nodded sharply in response.
“Does it really talk to you?” Hides asked.
Steve chuckled and the shadow shrugged. “Not the shadow, no. But I wanted something I could touch to talk to. Not my own head.”
“But crazy people can’t acknowledge that they’re crazy… Can they?” Hides looked to Blade, but he merely shrugged helplessly.
“Should we not get moving?” Fakyr proposed. Blade nodded, and after the troupe had gathered their belongings, he again led them farther west.
Some time into this second march, with the sun high in the morning sky and the desert wind at their backs, something odd happened to Blade. Flashing across his mind was an image of the landscape to the north, directly to his right. He instinctively paused and turned in that direction, thinking that perhaps he would see something.
“What is it?” Frost asked. Peering into the distance, Blade finally saw an irregularity; a line, straight up in the background.
“I think we turn here.” He declared.
“You think?”
“I see something north of here.”
“Truly?”
“It could be what we're looking for.” Blade started in that direction. The others, knowing that Blade would likely be hard to deter, merely followed. Soon, the line perpendicular with the ground grew into a spire, and then a domed structure, sticking out of the ground, still far away.
Blade mindlessly walked toward it, and Hides tackled him to the ground. Pushing him off indignantly, Blade glared at Hides as he rose. “What the hell was that for?” He shouted.
Hides pointed to where he had collided with Blade. When Blade looked, he saw a steep cliff, an abrupt drop that he would have heedlessly and recklessly fallen off. What had he been so careless? Could it have something to do with the images he had received? There were only two of them, so they likely were nothing. But what if they were significant? Blade could answer none of these, and he began to grow frustrated with the many riddles that had yet to sort themselves out.
“Are you alright, Blade?” Fakyr asked. Blade merely nodded and peered back out over the desert.
The structure was massive and cylindrical in shape. It looked old, rusted, and damaged, as if it hadn't been touched in decades, perhaps centuries. Spanning out from it were long catwalks, connected to much smaller versions of this central structure. Many of those walkways were broken, but a clear path could still be seen. In fact, the only such span of bridges that still connected to the unbroken cliff that extended in both directions was somewhat to the east. They had overshot in their march, but only a short distance.
As he looked back out, he wondered why the bridge in the first place. He saw no water, and no other hazardous spans. Perhaps the vast expanse of sand dunes before him was filled with unstable magics. When he looked at the base of the large cylindrical structures, especially the massive central one, the sands seemed to undulate. When he looked at a distant sand dune, he saw it rapidly descend, and a new one rise some distance away. The whole of the landscape seemed amorphous and unstable. Perhaps it was just a trick of the heat and light, but Blade didn't like guessing at this point.
“Frost,” Blade began, getting the young woman's attention. “Why is it called the Sea of Moving Sands?”
Frost moved up beside him, peering with him over the extending bleakness of wasteland. “Because that is what it is. It flows like water, but is made entirely of sand, of earth. If you were to try to walk on it, you would sink into it. If you would try to swim through it, you would find your limbs facing such resistance as if a true sand dune had been hurled atop you. That is why the bridges were built, we think; to span the Sea.”
“Why does it move like water?” Blade asked.
“Nobody knows for sure. Some say it's some ancient magical influence. Others say it's a remnant of the ancient civilizations. Others say that it is simply a natural phenomenon, some abomination of the laws of nature and physics. Still, it matters little. We can only cross it by the bridge, or go around.”
“How long would going around take?”
“Months, maybe even years. That is what primarily separates the southern nations with the north. They rarely meet each other, and so the two halves of the world keep to themselves.”
“The world is divided just by this Sea of Moving Sands?”
“Not the entire world, just the major nations.” Frost began to move toward the bridge to the east. “Shall we get going, then?”


* * * * *


The six reached the base of the bridge in short order, but here, they hesitated. Blade looked at the bridge, metal and rusted red. Few places still showed any metallic sheen that it may have once possessed. He immediately shared the fears of all those around him – of the bridge giving out beneath their feet as they crossed.
Cloack tapped Blade on the shoulder. “This is the Jocund territory. It likely won't take them long to find out we're here.” Blade nodded, and did what he could to muster his nerve.
“Well,” He began, cracking his knuckles by interlocking his fingers and pressing his hands, palms out, toward the ground. “We're not gaining any ground like this.” He took the first step, and placed his right foot firmly on the rusted metal. Shoving his resolve past the lump of fear in his throat and the knot in his gut, he took another step, going far enough as to tempt fate by stomping with his left foot as hard as he could on the metal.
It barely budged.
Indeed, it was no indication of the condition of the rest of the bridge complex, but it was a good start. Blade looked back to his nervous companions – Steve was even gnawing at his fingernails – and boldly strode confidently out into the middle of the bridge. When he stopped and looked again at the other five, they threw up a cheer, and Hides started forward.
The bridge groaned and shifted ever so slightly.
Blade, after regaining his balance, shouted at Hides, “Stop!” As Hides did so, the bridge calmed and no more metallic complaints resounded. “One at a time.” Blade declared, and moved quickly to finish his trek across the bridge. Stable now, with little excess weight on it, the walkway was easily navigable.
Hides, at a signal from Blade, began his own nervous journey across that first stretch of the Sea of Moving Sands. Gaining confidence on his way, he even jogged with a frightened mask upon his face. Frost came next, cockily dancing over to blade at where the bridge began to wrap about the first cylindrical column. Steve came next, his shadow dancing through the many rungs and beams of metal along the way. When the bridge gave a sudden lurch, the shadow crafted a protective net of darkness around Steve, binding together the two railings on either side and creating two of its own, one on either side of Steve.
The bridge quickly silenced itself, and Steve resumed his passage on a now awkwardly tilted catwalk. He stepped beside Blade with his face even more pale than usual, and looked back across to Cloack and Fakyr. “Are you alright?” Blade asked, to which Steve merely nodded sharply. His shadow, against everything Blade could possibly believe in, was not standing, but rather reflected a Steve sitting with his arms wrapped about pulled-in knees and rocking back and forth like a frightened child.
Cloack started to take a step, but Fakyr extended a thickly scaled arm across the smaller Dracos' chest to stop him. “Wait.” He commanded simply. He knelt down at the base of the bridge, now wedged between stones directly beneath where it had been before. He muttered a few things Blade never did catch, waving his hand over the anchoring struts of metal that bound the bridge to the cliff. As he did so, a green light shone from his palm and onto the metal. From the stone, immediately and impossibly fast, sprouted vines. Thick, green vines, the likes of which few had ever seen in a desert such as this, and so deep therein, twined themselves about the bridge. They even lifted the catwalk back to a more stable level. They grew all the way to the other side, stopping just before Blade's feet.
Fakyr motioned for Cloack to proceed, and he did so, nodding in thanks to the larger Dracos. When Cloack had reached the halfway point of the bridge, the vines began to brown and shrivel.
“Run!” Fakyr shouted. “The spell won't last much longer!” Cloack needed no further prompting, and sprinted as fast as he could toward the other end of the bridge. With each step, some of the vines broke away, and the bridge edged closer to where it had fallen previously. Just a few yards from Blade, and the catwalk was now inching past that point, and the vines had nearly all but gone.
One last leap brought Cloack to the others, a roll broke his fall, and a metallic screech preceded the complete collapse of the bridge, and the companions could only watch as the rusted detritus of the bridge plunged into and was consumed by the amorphous, swirling sands below.
Blade and the companions on his side all looked up at Fakyr. Blade grew forlorn as he saw Fakyr's ruined wings, and distance between them, impossible to simply jump across. He didn't know what to do, how to get Fakyr across.
“How will you follow us?” Blade shouted. “Do you see another way across?”
Fakyr looked both directions down the seemingly endless expanse of cliff and desert. Looking back at them, he merely shook his head.
“What are we going to do?” Frost asked Blade.
“I'm not sure.” Blade replied, quite honestly.
“We can't just leave him behind.” Cloack stated.
“Thank you!” Blade irritably snapped. “The obvious eluded me.”
All eyes turned to Steve as the deranged man began to mutter quietly, much like Fakyr had. When they saw him, he was speaking quietly to his shadow. Nobody could hear what he said, and they feared a complete break, a snap that rendered even Steve incapable of functioning as properly as a man like Steve could.
Steve turned, ignoring the others and walked up to where the catwalk once stood. He lifted his hands high, and then brought them down to rest upon the metal of the structure. His shadow slithered out of hiding behind him, and only its torso rose up before him, only that part gaining a three-dimensional form. It, too, placed its 'hands' down, but on what Blade knew not. It was suspended in mid-air, where the catwalk once was.
Knelt as he was, Steve's hair covered his face, and none could see his expression as tendrils of blackness extended from his hands and the body of the shadow, moving straight out into the open air. The bottoms of these tendrils resembled the thick vines Fakyr had conjured to get Cloack across the catwalk, but the tops were entirely flat, forming a perfect plane that stretched all the way across the gap. No one said a thing as the blackness touched down on the cliff, and Fakyr, understanding the nature of this technique, placed a foot tentatively upon the blackness.
Finding it to be solid, Fakyr quickly hurried across to the remaining companions.
The black tendrils quickly receded, and Steve's shadow returned to as normal a shadow as can be expected of Steve. He turned to the others and waited patiently with his hands clasped behind his back, and an expectant look on his face, as if expecting one of the others to pull out a story book and begin reading aloud.
“That was kind of close, guys.” Cloack pointed out. “Is it going to be that way this entire trip?”
“Quit your bitchin'!” Frost snapped. “You don't have a choice in the matter.”
“But we could have died!” Cloack frantically reiterated.
“Would you rather that I didn't cast that spell to keep the bridge in place?” Fakyr ominously asked. “Or perhaps an all-expense-paid vacation into the Moving Sands, sponsored by my hand around your collar?”
Cloack bowed his head at the open threat, and was silent.
“Give him a break.” Blade put in. “His concerns are not without merit. I'm not sure any of us truly understand the danger of this quest, but we all signed in, and there really isn't much turning back now.” He turned to each of them in turn. “We can't afford to bicker amongst ourselves. What if something comes between us in battle? Or perhaps in another situation like that bridge? Would any of us stick out our neck for another's life if we absolutely hate them?
“Believe me when I say if I see any of you fighting, I'll end it, one way or another.” He looked to Cloack and Fakyr. Fakyr nodded to Cloack, as close to an apology as Blade would hear, he knew. Cloack bowed apologetically to Blade. “Thank you. I will have no hostility between friends.”
“I have a question.” Hides piped in. Blade turned to him, one eyebrow raised. “Who died and made you king?”
Three seconds later, Blade him by the strap of his breastplate, dangling him over the edge of the catwalk strata, the swirling sands below churning viciously, hungrily. “All right!” Hides shouted in sheer terror. “All right! I'm sorry!”
Blade tossed Hides onto his backside. “Good. Now that we understand each other, and since few of you have the skills to be a real leader, you will all follow my command.”
“I have another question.” Blade turned, annoyed, to Hides again. “This time, it's kinda serious. What if we don't follow your command?”
“Well, since I can't send you back home, I'll be forced to detain, torture, or, should it become severe, kill you.” Blade replied. He meant little of it. He saw a crack in the integrity of his allies, and meant to keep it from falling apart. He hoped that perhaps, over time, they would grow closer together and would be less hostile. Even Cloack and Fakyr, both from the race of Dracos, were fighting! He intended to change it, whether he had to enforce his word or not.
“Got it.” Hides rose to his feet and dusted himself off, which only served to scatter the dust from his life on the street across the new dust from the road. “Where to, leader?”
“There's really only one way to go, now.” Blade started down the curving walkway that followed the circumference of the large cylinder. On the other side, he found another catwalk. He started across it, found it much more stable, and motioned for the others to follow.


* * * * *



No other bridge was nearly as unstable as that first, and the troupe's progress was swift. While the rest of the bridge complex was no less rusted than that first catwalk, it seemed nothing was ready to fall, save the ends of those bridges that had already deteriorated and fallen long ago. They encountered disembodied railings, spanning a bridge that no longer existed, simply extending the gap with no solid planes beneath them. Other times, they passed the beginnings of bridges, sagging as they extended and then ending as long ago the rest of the bridge, the middles having fallen into the Sea of Moving Sands. Sometimes, the companions saw a large cylinder on the other side of those gaps, to which the bridge would have no doubt extended, but most often the bridges would have spanned into nothingness. Blade even saw the top of a cylinder poking out above the churning sands, no doubt ancient anchors that were long since destroyed or submerged.
And through it all, the clouds to the north loomed ever closer. Blade could feel winds coming from that direction, the gusts of the storms they were no doubt going to wade into. For a moment, he questioned the wisdom and worth of this risk, of taking these innocents into the throes of danger. As he walked, he began to fear for his friends, but remembered each of their unique skills.
Steve was unpredictable, clearly skilled with his weapon, and virtually one with his shadow. His mental attacks would be invaluable as well, harming their enemies directly where it counted. Hides and Frost were skilled in their own rights, could take on nearly any foe together. Cloack no doubt had some tricks up his sleeve, despite being only a novice magician. One does not live as the grandson of one of the most powerful creatures on earth and not learn a few things. Finally, Blade had no doubt that along with his magic, Fakyr could physically demolish most any adversary any of them ever encountered, weapon or no. Indeed, each of them were quite secure, and together, woe unto the world if it turned on them!
With that realization, Blade felt much more comforted. If they ran into trouble, he held no doubts that each were capable of taking care of themselves.
And so, he led on, moving ever north, the winds picking up in gusts and dying to a constant, distant howl. The catwalks became monotonous, and bled into each other as the boredom began to set in. No twists or turns, endless, churning sands, and at the end of each walkway, they only the other side, twisting about their central structure. The massive cylinder, the halfway point, was nearly upon them. When they finally reached the catwalk that would take them to that structure, they paused.
It wasn't fear or frustration that placed the hesitance in their steps. It was a massive discoloration, one that Blade was sure hadn't been there earlier. Distant though it was, a bystander on the far-away cliff would have been able to see this.
It seemed almost a virus, spreading across the cylinder, a blackness that threatened to corrupt it. With a brief examination, Blade could see the darkness even encroaching upon the walkways adjacent to the cylinder. The blackness only covered half the structure, but it was massive still. At the point nearest to companions, directly across from them, there was a ladder, untouched by the darkness, and still rusty red. It led up all the way to the top of the structure, seemingly a call, a plead for them to follow it.
“Should we see what's up there?” Hides asked as he gazed at the top, looking for something odd.
“It could hamper us.” Blade stated, and Fakyr nodded his agreement. “We should see if it is indeed a hindrance.”
As Blade started forward, a hand caught his arm and turned him about. Blade faced Steve, his face concerned. “It could be Edge.”
Blade nodded after digesting that information, and turned again for the ladder. His boots crashing loudly against the walkway, he stood at the base of the ladder. He looked back to his companions.
“You should go first.” Cloack offered. To that Blade nodded his agreement, though he did not like it. This whole event seemed... unusual.
Hand over hand, foot over foot, Blade made his way up the ladder, and emerged atop the massive cylinder. He saw little aside from the still spreading blackness. He walked the diameter of the circle he stood on, looking out far across the Sea of Moving Sands. He felt he should leave, some part of him, screaming at him from deep inside to gather his friends and flee.
Those friends quickly joined him, hearing no sounds of struggle. They stood beside him, not knowing why he had simply frozen there. “This is pointless. We should move on.” Fakyr declared, turning to leave.
Something threw him to the ground.
All eyes turned to Fakyr who had fallen atop the dark viral tendrils. They rushed to help him up, and Blade saw the tendrils do as Steve's shadow did, and gain a three-dimensional shape atop the metal, and trip each of his friends in turn.
Blade's eyes narrowed, seeing the deception. Whatever adversary they saw now had left no escape. The catwalk was too far down to jump, and even then, doing so would leave them vulnerable. They could lose a valuable life that way. This enemy had to be defeated, now that they had aggravated it to begin with.
“Show yourself!” Blade demanded, his five companions returning to his side, all having drawn their weapons. They each went down the same logical path that Blade had, and were ready to fight.
The tendrils began to recede, the blackness returning to a singular point at the top of the ladder. At that point, the darkness began to emerge from the surface of the cylinder, taking a shape and definite form. It became humanoid, and as the last of the tendrils became a part of it, it took on a more effeminate shape.
“What are you?” Blade pulled his scythe from his back. As he did, though, an image of Edge flashed across his consciousness. He looked down to the scythe, thinking perhaps...
It mattered not just then and there. “Were you sent by Edge?”
The black creature moved closer, almost sauntered toward them. She laughed, her voice ethereal and echoing upon nothing. Her face reflected no light, and had no features, betrayed no emotion. It was merely a flat mast upon the dark thing's head. What passed as the creature's hair fell in black strands that melded with its skull and cascaded to the small of the abomination's back. Little adorned her skin, as it was smooth and black as cut onyx. Yet it reflected no light, as that stone would. It was as if Steve's shadow had called a cousin, and that cousin had betrayed them all.
“What monster is this?” Fakyr hissed.
“Something that wants to die.” Frost shot back.
The creature flicked her arm downward, and it shifted suddenly into a blade much like that which Steve held. It rushed forward, the sword arm drawn back for a heavy thrust. Steve was the first to intercept it with his shadow. Immediately following, falling into the space of the shadow as it parried the dark creature's attack, was Steve himself, his sword angled so as to allow the dark creature's attack to slide away.
Steve expected the creature to be open, and swung in a backhand. It was, however, stopped. With one arm helplessly behind it, and another angled toward the ground, a third had sprouted out of the creature's side, born of the very darkness that the wretched thing was made of. It stopped Steve's swing dead, and the blade he parried swung back in a manner similar to Steve's intended tactic. It knocked him back, causing him to slide on his back, leaving behind shreds of his trench coat on the rough rust of the cylinder that rapidly evaporated into darkness.