Bound to the Abyss Page 22

  Dragging Bran along, Jaslen began to hum happily as she started off the road. Bran looked skeptical, casting questioning glances back at Ean while he tried to keep up. “I think we should be a bit more careful in approaching this,” his voice cut off with a grunt as he kicked a rock he hadn’t seen on the ground.

  Ean caught up quickly and placed a hand on Jaslen’s shoulder. “He’s right. We don’t know if the Seekers are there, or some kind of mutated animal like that troll, or even something dangerous from the Abyss itself.” Zin’s warning about the Nar’Grim flashed through his mind and was gone. “Best if we approach it slowly and try to keep quiet as we do so.”

  Jaslen nodded, her smile diminished. “Fine, we’ll take it slow, and from now on we won’t talk. But if nothing is around when we get there, I’m not making any promises that I’ll remain calm.”

  She gave a self-satisfied nod then stared directly at Ean. After a moment of no one moving, she grunted and raised her hands. “Well? If you can feel this thing, then you should take the lead. Let’s go already.”

  He couldn’t argue with that. Stepping around the two of them, Ean began to walk off in what he thought was the direction of the Scar. Or at least the direction of whatever was causing the tugging at the back of his mind. Glancing back, he caught Jaslen just as she was snatching Bran’s hand up into her own.

  Ean picked up his pace. The further away from the road they got, the thicker the forest grew. Thorny plants grabbed at his boots or hid logs or rocks for him to trip over. Here, where trees and vines grew uninterrupted, a beam of sunlight was rare.

  The closer they got to whatever it was that was causing the sensation, the more defined the throbbing in his head became. He almost tripped twice in a matter of a few paces apart because of it.

  Finally, when the pounding in his head was almost unbearable, they circled around a huge tree, and found it.

  The Scar.

  Hovering about fifty or so paces from where he was standing, the purple outline of an oval floated in the air a pace or two above the ground. Triple the height of the average man and twice the width, it sucked up the light around it, creating a black void at its center. Small streaks of dark blue energy shot off of it at random, creating jagged bolts that cut through the air. It really did look like a scar in the world.

  A gasp behind him let him know the other two had caught up, but he couldn’t pull his gaze away from the floating mass of energy. The area around it looked as if an enormous force had pushed out from the Scar in every direction. Trees were either leaning away from the Scar or had snapped as if from some great pressure. The devastation reached about halfway between where Ean was standing and where the Scar was hovering.

  “It’s beautiful,” he heard Jaslen whisper. “Let’s go closer.”

  Even though Ean could hear the desire to do so in her voice, she didn’t move.

  “Is it safe to move any closer?” Bran’s voice was so low that Ean could barely hear it over the throbbing in his head.

  “I’m … not sure.”

  A large part of him wanted to go running up to it, touch it, feel its power. But the image of the bandit, mutated and deformed, made him stop.

  “I think getting too close could be dangerous. I wouldn’t want any of us ending up deformed like that troll we came across.”

  “True,” was Bran’s only reply.

  So the three of them stood there, looking at a doorway to another world. The realm of Ze’an, a place of strange creatures and unnamed horrors. How easy would it be to walk up and touch it? Ean knew deep down they were dangerous thoughts.

  Dragging his gaze away from the Scar, Ean took another look at his companions. Bran was still watching the Scar with a grim determination. His body seemed tensed and he was making no move to get closer. Jaslen was a different story. She was leaning forward as if even the slightest word would have her heading towards the Scar. The only thing that was keeping her in place was Bran’s hand holding firmly onto her own.

  Zin had said Ean’s tattoos would protect him from being affected by the energy of the Abyss, but they offered no protection to those around him. If Ean went, he was sure the girl would follow. So no, it was best to just observe the Scar for a time and then leave.

  The dimming of the light in the forest only seemed to make the Scar grow brighter. The usual sounds of a forest thriving with animals were gone, replaced by silence and the occasional crackle of energy from the Scar itself.

  Until a loud pop made them all jump. Bran’s sword came out. Jaslen’s bow was drawn. Heads swiveled anxiously about until they realized it had just been a twig snapped by Bran shifting his weight. The three laughed a bit sheepishly at each other, blushes filling their faces in unison. Ean thought that if they were this jumpy, maybe it was time for them to get going. He was just about to say as much when a man’s scream echoed through the forest.

  “Noooo, pleeeaaase!”

  Ean dropped down without thinking. Bran and Jaslen had crouched down as well, although both had moved closer to him and the large tree.

  “Please let me go! Let me go!”

  The yells were coming from ahead of them. Either straight ahead or to the right, it was hard to judge the direction of sound in the forest. It had sounded like an older man, a mixture of hoarseness and a quavering fear.

  “No, I didn’t go anywhere near it! Please don’t hurt me!”

  The voice was getting closer. Was it a Nar’Grim? Should they run, or should they try and hide? Thoughts were almost impossible to hold onto with the Scar so close.

  “No, no, no! We can’t be this close to it, it’s too danger … mph …”

  The man’s voice cut off after Ean heard a loud thud followed by whimpering. He glanced back at his companions, who returned his look with blank stares. Did they really expect him to decide what to do? So be it. He motioned them with his hand to get lower and move more behind the tree. Getting into a prone position, he lay there and watched.

  The whimpering grew louder and louder, but it wasn’t an old man that came into view first. The complete opposite actually. The man that came into view maybe a dozen or so paces from the Scar was young, although he looked like he had a number of years on Ean. Standing at a height halfway from the ground to the Scar, the giant of a man was covered from shoulder to toe in white leather armor that gave the illusion that he had been chiseled from marble. He had a shaved head and a square jaw that jutted out over his chest. His nose was thin and pointed, and his deep-set eyes looked like pools of black ink.

  The giant man walked straight towards the Scar, stopping only a few paces from it. His right hand dropped to his side, coming to rest on the hilt of a sheathed dagger. He stood there examining the Scar, seemingly unafraid of the pulsating energy shooting off the hole to the Abyss. Motionless, he stared at the Scar, his face growing darker with each passing second.

  While the man was huge and imposing, the woman that joined him was much shorter, similar in size to Jaslen, and yet still walked with an air of confidence. Sleek, white armor covered her torso and limbs. A sword swung from her waist, the scabbard plain. She had a slim face, a small, upturned nose and slanted dark-green eyes. Her face was framed with black hair that was cut short to the bottom of her ears. A thick, blood-red strand trailed down the right side, a sharp contrast to her serious demeanor.

  The woman stood next to the man for a time, her mouth moving as she addressed him. Unfortunately, she was speaking too quietly for Ean to hear from his position. He could tell though from her expressions that she was unhappy about something. At one point she placed both hands on her hips and Ean could just make out what she was saying.

  “…have to do something about EliZane. He is getting worse.”

  When she only received a curt nod in reply from the man, she grimaced and shook her head, then sat down heavily on an old log.

  The giant pulled out a dagger unlike anything Ean had ever seen. The hilt was nothing like metal, wood, or leather, but white and smooth
as glass. There was no hand guard to protect its owner from the wickedly curved blade. Ean struggled to make out the etchings along its edge, but it was too far away. A round blue gem decorated the blade’s base, the Scar’s lightning bolts reflecting on its surface, making it sparkle.

  Holding the dagger out like a shield, the imposing man moved closer to the Scar. As he approached the glowing tear in the world, the light coming off the escaping bolts of energy seemed to reflect more and more off the dagger’s gem. The white-armored giant reached the Scar, the light shining off the gem in every direction, so bright now that Ean had to shield his eyes slightly even from his spot.

  The large man thrust his blade straight into the Scar. A blaze of light erupted from the portal to the Abyss that made Ean, Bran and Jaslen throw their arms up to shield their eyes. An incredible force nearly bowled Ean over, knocking the breath right out of him. Then, just as quickly as it had appeared, the blazing light vanished.

  Ean’s eyes swam with dark colors as he tried to catch his breath. The throbbing in the back of his skull was completely gone. When his eyes cleared, it was exactly as he had thought. The large man stood there, either already recovered from the dazzling lights and force or unaffected by them. The dagger still rested in his hand, the gem sparkling even now. Brushing leaves and twigs from her armor, the woman wore an annoyed expression but seemed unaffected as well. The Scar however was gone, which meant only one thing.

  A chill ran down Ean’s back, a cold sensation like dunking your head in a bog in the middle of the Chill season. Only one group was capable of seeking out Scars and closing them.

  Seekers.

  Ean began crawling backward. He only got a short distance before he ran into Bran and Jaslen. Why weren’t they moving? Jaslen was pointing back at where the Scar had been, which caused Ean to swing his head back around in panic.

  Two people had joined the Seekers. The first was a man of average height, dressed in the same white armor as the other two Seekers, except it seemed to hang awkwardly on his much thinner frame. He had short brown hair that was long enough to hang in front of his eyes, hiding a good portion of his face. His mouth was visible, giving such a humorless grin that even from as far away as Ean was it gave him the chills. A variety of different tools hung at his belt, most being wicked-looking knives. Some of the other tools were foreign to him, but a few Ean recognized as tools a trapper would use. In one hand he held a small knife, and in the other he was dragging the fourth person by the shirt.

  The last man looked haggard. The small amount of white hair that remained on his mostly bald head was sticking out in every direction. His shirt and pants looked as if they had been gray at one point but now were covered in mud. The older man’s wrinkled face was bruised, and he was bleeding from a few small cuts on his face. From his appearance and how the thin man was manhandling him, the older man was clearly the source of the cries they had heard earlier.

  “For an old man, this one gave me quite the run.” The newest Seeker said loudly, a dark chuckle escaping from his lips. “Ended up being a random root that brought him down. Go figure.”

  “Please sir, I don’t want any troub …” the prisoner began before a swift blow from the thin Seeker shut him up.

  “EliZane!” The woman pushed the thin man away. “You do not need to be so rough with the poor man. He is obviously scared.” Reaching into a pouch at her waist, the woman pulled out a cloth and began dabbing at the wounds on his face.

  “So? He should be scared,” the thin man named EliZane said, shrugging his shoulders.

  “You always make things worse than they need to be. There is no need to hit …”

  “And you always try and coddle people we find when you know that most likely we’ll end up ….”

  “I treat them like they should be treated, EliZane, like our God Alistar would want us to treat …”

  “I’m pretty sure our God wants us to end this man’s life, Kaytlin. Treating him well before doing so is probably just as painful …”

  “Enough!”

  The larger man’s voice was an explosion of sound, silencing the two bickering immediately. Ean had almost forgotten about him, but from his commanding voice it was clear he was the leader of the three. With measured strides he moved between the two, giving each a gaze that made them both wilt. Their captive was near hysterics at this point, his head in his hands, large sobs escaping from his mouth.

  “Stand aside, both of you. We will end this now one way or another.”

  The other two Seekers quickly stepped back, giving the leader and older man a decent amount of space. Kneeling down, the larger man began to speak quietly. After a time the older man began to calm, his sobs softening until they finally stopped, and he was nodding at whatever the other man was saying. When the larger man stopped talking, the older wore a peaceful expression.

  The other two Seekers watched the whole exchange with different reactions. EliZane watched with a wicked grin at first, but it slowly changed into a sour one as the older man calmed down. When the man stopped crying altogether, the thin man scowled and let out a disgusted sigh. The woman, Kaytlin, on the other hand, relaxed along with the man, her grim demeanor slowly disappearing. As the man stopped crying, she cast a pitying smile on both the old man and the Seeker at his side.

  A tug at the back of his shirt almost made him yell out, but he slapped a gloved hand over his mouth as if he could physically hold it in. Turning his head, he scowled at both Bran and Jaslen, not sure which had almost caused his heart to stop. They both backed away from him slightly, but it was Jaslen that motioned for him to follow. So they wanted to leave now? Not likely. Ean’s curiosity had won out against his fear. With a curt shake of his head, Ean’s attention returned to the Seekers.

  EliZane was pacing now, his mouth working slightly, as if he were struggling to hold in his own words. The woman, Kaytlin, was sitting again with her head bowed, eyes shut, and lips moving. The huge Seeker moved. Still kneeling next to the old man, he brought his hand up that held the dagger. Ean was surprised to see the old man look at it without the slightest hint of fear. The Seeker held out the blade for what seemed like an eternity, until the gem on the hilt again began to sparkle with the faintest light.

  Without warning, the Seeker thrust the blade directly into the man’s chest. The gem flared and then blinked out, mirroring the life that the blade just took.

  Jaslen gave a tiny squeak behind Ean, but he didn’t dare turn. The Seekers thankfully didn’t seem to hear. The giant of a man gently lowered the old man to the ground, removing his dagger and laying him onto his back. Placing his hands over the old man’s eyes, he uttered a prayer loud enough that Ean could hear.

  “Alistar, God of Justice and Light, please forgive this man his curiosity. Allow Kaz’ren to claim his spirit and carry him to reside with his ancestors.”

  Rising, the Seeker turned his back to where Ean hid and motioned for the other two Seekers to join him. They did so and all three stood around the man, conversing quietly with their backs to Ean and his companions. Still shocked at how quickly the Seeker had ended the older man’s life, Ean decided it might be a good time to sneak off. He certainly didn’t want to be around those three any longer. Placing his hands on the ground, he was about to back up when he saw the huge man raise the dagger over his head.

  The dagger was still covered in blood, but what caught Ean’s attention was that gem on the hilt. It was still glowing, pulsing being a better word, an almost hypnotic rhythm to its dark blue flashes. He couldn’t move, he could barely breathe. It felt like his entire body was made of stone. Ean felt something tugging on the bottom of his pants, but he couldn’t even turn his head to look. Numb. That was all he felt, cold and numb.

  “Ean, I really think we should go.”

  Jaslen’s voice sounded muted to his ears, as if someone had stuffed them with cotton. The giant man still had his back to them, but the other two were slowly looking around. For what, Ean had no idea but he didn
’t want to find out. His mind strained with the effort to get his body to move, but nothing happened. With nothing left to try, he did the only thing left that he could think of to do.

  The energy from the Abyss flooded into him. He had only meant to take in a small amount at first to see if that could free him, but with his numbed sense he apparently had no control over it at first. Warmth flooded his body, the feeling returning to previously petrified limbs. His body felt like it had been run over by a wagon, all of his muscles sore from being locked in place for even such a short amount of time.

  At the same time as his strength was returning, the gem on the man’s dagger flared to life, the glow brightening to the point where the three Seekers had to shield their eyes. After a few moments it lessened, but the pulsing of the light grew faster.

  That was enough to get Ean to back away on hands and knees, keeping an eye on the Seekers the whole time. If they could just get a little further away without being noticed, hopefully that gem wouldn’t lead the Seekers to them. Ean had almost made it behind the tree when EliZane’s eyes came to rest on him. The man’s eyes widened and his mouth spread into a wicked grin, leaving Ean no doubt that he had been spotted.

  “Run,” he said harshly, pushing himself up onto his feet. The other two followed suit, taking off in the opposite direction of the strangers … and also away from the road.

  Chapter 20

  FLIGHT OR FIGHT

  With a grunt Ean took off after his companions. It was probably better they didn’t go back towards the road, but he had no idea how they would find it again. The other two pulled ahead of him, both being in much better shape. But it was only for a moment. With the energy of the Abyss still flowing in him, he found an extra supply of strength and speed. In a matter of moments he had caught his two friends and passed them. He dodged around trees and over stumps with ease, not feeling the slightest bit winded.