“Why do we continue to do this?” Nyxa whispered. “Why do we continue to love when we should not?”
Sován turned from the fireplace towards her. His dark eyes glimmered in the light of the fire. “It’s simple. Because we cannot help but love each other.”
Nyxa sighed, sitting on the sofa in the room, cradling her head in her hands. “A knight and a cleric should not love each other.”
She felt his weight settle next to her. Her skin tingled as his warm, smooth fingertips caressed her neck. “Yet we do.”
Nyxa looked at him. He was close, and his scent enraptured her. Her body jerked as she restrained herself from forcing his mouth to hers.
He opened his hand. In it was a blue jewel on a silver chain. “This is for you,” he said. “It was my mother’s.” His eyes fixed on hers. “I want you to have it before I leave for Ostus. So you will always be reminded of me. Of us.”
Nyxa gazed at it, her lips parted. “Sován, I can’t…it’s too…”
“Shhh.” He took the necklace and adorned it around her neck. “I want you to have it.” He took her hand and placed it over his chest. “As I want you to have my heart.”
She looked into his eyes, and this time, she did not hold herself back.
***
The woman had thorns in her three eyes.
It was a statue of a Liure, a handmaiden of the Pale Lady. A wreath of roses clung to the statue like a shadow, crowning it in blossoms of black, and shrouding its eyes, including the one in its forehead. Shadows spilled from its feet, casted by the silver-white orb that hung in the sky.
Nyxa turned from the statue and continued walking through the courtyard of the ancient temple. Tendrils of vines slithered through the cracks of the stones and wisteria bloomed from the low hanging arches in brilliant arrays of purple and white. A fountain in the courtyard was choked with weeds and wild yellow daisies. Another Liure had at one time stood in the center of the fountain but all that remained was its legs. The top half of the statue rested some yards away, as it if had been tossed aside like some child’s doll.
The half-elven knight bit her lip in consternation. Her order had sent her here to Ostus because no word had been heard from the clerics in months. Ostus was well-known, even outside of the moon goddess’s ilk, as a place where clerics secluded themselves in prayer and study. But there was no sign of the clerics, and the temple was in ruins, presumably since the beginning of summer given the untamed foliage.
Nyxa worried at the blue stone around her neck, wondering what had happened to the temple. Here and there were the black blemishes of scorch marks marring the white marble of the pillars and walls. She sensed the remnants of divine magic emitting from the marks. There had been a battle, that much was clear.
The knight passed from the courtyard through an archway into the sanctuary of the temple. Shadows filled the room. Pieces of glass, the remains of the sanctuary’s stained-glass windows, glittered like a dragon’s jewels under the moonbeams that pierced through the temple. Nyxa placed her hand on her sword, creeping cat-quiet through the silver gloom.
A patch of moonlight made her freeze. In its light was dark, dried blood steaked like careless paint strokes. The streaks made a path, leading to the back of the sanctuary. Nyxa followed it, slowly drawing her blade from its scabbard.
The trail ended at a heavy metal door, carved with the angelic visage of Iltaku, her eyes closed, her hair floating about her face in streams of engraved silver. It was the door to the catacombs, where the goddess’s most precious servants slept eternally.
Nyxa pushed on the door. It gave way with a soft creaking of its hinges. From the dark maw of the open door came a smell of dust and decay. Underlying the scent was a cold aura of evil, one that chilled Nyxa to her bones.
She clutched the blue stone at her neck. A warmth emitted from it. It reminded her of Sován’s breath at her ear, the security that she felt when he wrapped his arms around her.
The knight took a deep breath, and stepped into the dark.
***
Nyxa put out a hand to keep herself steady with each step she took down the narrow staircase. Though her elven blood allowed her vision to pierce the darkness better than any human’s could, the heaviness of the shadows was still oppressing, and if she was not careful, she’d stumble. She kept her sword raised before her and her senses alert.
She found the last step. The stairs had led to a short hallway that ended in a turn. At its end was the dim glow of firelight. The knight approached it, rounding the corner cautiously.
She stifled a scream.
A procession of pillars supported the ceiling. Chained to each one were the clerics of Iltaku. Rot had set into their flesh, filling the hall with a noxious stench that made Nyxa gag. Their bellies were ripped open, their insides hanging out, and holes gazed from their faces as if their eyes had been freshly plucked by ravens. On the floor were piles of bones and mummified corpses, the remains of the catacombs’ inhabitants.
Lit torches were attached to each pillar, leading down the hall to the stone coffin of Ostus himself, the cleric who had founded the temple three hundred years before. A figure in a dark, hooded robe stood at the coffin using it as a table as his hands delved into the cadaver of a dead priestess. The figure’s voice was masculine as it sang softly, its arms moving about in the priestess’s open belly in a way that reminded Nyxa of kneading dough.
The hooded man looked up, and Nyxa saw that he wore a scarf around his nose and mouth to keep out the stench of death that pervaded the air. “Ah, it looks as if I’ve been found out.”
Rage flooded Nyxa’s veins as she raised two fingers. Iltaku, give me your power! A cold ray of silver light shot from her fingertips and soared right towards him. There was the glimmer of a shadow and a corpse sprung from the sea of bodies. It intercepted the spell and exploded into a hundred rotten pieces.
The necromancer’s voice was snide. “Welcome, Knight of the Pale Lady.” His eyes gleamed as he spread out his hands. “Do you like the new decorations of your goddess’s temple?”
Hot rage flooded through Nyxa as she tightened her grip on her sword. “How dare you defile Iltaku’s temple? Who are you? Where is Sován?”
The hooded man cocked his head. “Sován? I’m afraid I don’t know who that is.”
Nyxa scanned the pillars, looking at the horrible, dead faces of Ostus’s clerics. None of them belonged to her lover. Was it possible that he had escaped and that he was still alive? She prayed to Iltaku that he was.
She ran forward, casting another silver beam from her fingers. Another corpse leaped as quickly as a grasshopper into the path of the magic and was rent to pieces. The floor began to writhe as all the bodies started to twitch and move, the loose bones of discarded skeletons knitting together by the power of the necromancer’s dark magic. They rose as looming bodies of dead flesh.
Crying out, Nyxa swung her sword, riving through the newly born undead. Carious limbs and heads flew in every direction, the fury in Nyxa’s heart guiding every strike of her blade. But it was to no avail. The corpses soon overwhelmed the half-elf, restraining her arms, clinging to her like ravenous locusts to a green stalk. Nyxa dropped her sword and succumbed to the weight of the rotting flesh, falling to her knees.
The hooded man approached, looking down at the helpless knight. “Well, you fought valiantly, but I’m afraid a single knight of an inept goddess is of no real threat against my power.”
Nyxa bared her teeth. “You dare blaspheme Iltaku in her own temple?”
The necromancer laughed. “You poor, pathetic child. You think you serve a god, but you do not. You are as deluded as these fools who now adorn the pillars of your goddess’s temple. There is only one True God, and he will soon be usurped and cast down. The power I am unlocking will shake all of Glomora to its very core.”
Nyxa struggled against the corpses. “Who are you?”
A dark chuckle. “You know who I am.” His voice was different now. Familiar, but not exactly what she knew it to be. The necromancer removed his hood and scarf, and Nyxa screamed.
Sován looked down on her with a sardonic smile. “Hello, my love.”
“No! This isn’t real! You’re using an illusion on me! Damn you!”
Sován knelt before her. His fingers toyed with the blue stone around Nyxa’s neck. “Really? Then how do I know that I gave you this? In the tavern room where we always met in secret, because, after all, a knight and a cleric of Iltaku are forbidden to love one another.”
Hot tears streamed down her face. It was true. Deep down, she knew it was really Sován before her.
“Why?” she croaked.
“Because, Nyxa, I learned the truth, and I will not play lapdog to a weak goddess any longer. And because of all the places to be, this was the most fruitful ground for my work.” He waved his hands at the throng of undead about him. “This is the result of my labor for these past few months. Soon my efforts will yield even more fruit.
“Now, the question is,” he whispered. “Will you join me, my love? Will you serve with me, or will I make you join the dead? Make the right choice. You and I can be immortal, and we will no longer have to be separated. We will be lovers beyond forever.”
Nyxa stared at him. There was evil in his eyes, an evil, she realized, that had been slumbering for a long time beneath the glow of his once gentle gaze. She wanted to tell herself that it was an illusion, that he was possessed by a foul spirit, but in her heart of hearts she knew the man before him was the one that she loved, and that he was now a monster and a traitor.
“I will not become an apostate,” she said. “I broke an oath loving you, Sován, and of that I repent. But I will not do this. I will not give in to evil and darkness, even for your love.”
Sován quirked his lips into a kind of pout. “Very well then. I am sorry it had to be this way. Perhaps we will meet again, in the other world.”
He grabbed the blue stone around her neck and gave it a hard yank, breaking the chain. He turned and walked towards Ostus’s coffin. Before he reached it, he spoke in a low voice like the echo of a dark creature hiding beneath the iciest waters.
“Eat her.”
Nyxa screamed as rotten, jagged teeth tore into her flesh. Bony fingers reached for her eyes. Nyxa looked at the ceiling, where a carved etching of Iltaku stared benignly down at her, her arms open, ushering in the departed souls of her followers. Nyxa yanked one arm loose, reaching out to the engraving of her goddess with an outstretched, blood-soaked hand.
“Iltaku! Iltaku! I give to you my soul! Do not forsake your servant! To you I commend my soul!”
Her cries were cut short as the undead piled one by one on top of her, their jaws snapping, their hunger for living flesh never abating, even as they ate.