This is a short story I wrote in my spare time. It's the prologue for a longer story, maybe a novella, and a pieceof backhistory for Epitheisterra. Hope you like it.
Body and Soul
Part 4
"Body and Soul"
The knight approached the rusty iron door. Carefully watching for traps, he put his gloved hand on the handle and pushed. The door swung open with an awful shriek, revealing an inky black tunnel beyond. The knight looked back at the clear evening sky, and gazed at the setting autumn sun for what might very well be the last time. Resigning himself to his task, he turned and plunged into the darkness. This knight had no name, with such a useless frivolity of the soul having been shrugged off many years ago on his quest for peace of mind. He had found it at a monastery several years ago, and had learned from the monks the secrets of life, and of their God. He learned that the soul was all that mattered, and that the souls purpose was to further Gods works on Earth.
A name hindered the souls quest for its God, and so corrupted the soul. The body was merely a vessel for the soul on Earth, so that the soul could accomplish Gods works. The knight strode onward, and the darkness closed around him. Without even needing to look, he drew out his tinderbox and torch and started to light it. A small flame leapt from the torch, insignificant against the void of the tunnel, but enough so that the body would not fail and hamper the souls quest. His armor was also intended to save the soul, with dozens of small, interlocking plates almost guaranteed to stave off any assault. His steel broad sword hung from a harness on his back. Nearly four feet long and three inches wide, its purpose was simple: to smite the enemies of God.
The tunnel continued on for about fifty yards, and the knight stepped into an open cavern, its only adornments being a small pool of water and a wooden trap door on the far side of the room. He walked near the pool, and gazed in, and saw his helmeted reflection looking back at him. Underneath the surface, a single white cave fish swam slowly, eyeless and looking more like an unidentifiable blob than a fish. He turned to the trapdoor, and attempted to open it. It was locked, but a single kick from his steel-shod boot crushed the hinges and sent the rotted wood tumbling into a long, black shaft.
The knight leaned over the hole, and saw that here was no ladder leading down. He lit another torch and tossed it into the abyss, trying to gauge the distance to the bottom. The torch quickly plummeted, revealing a one hundred foot-long shaft with jagged rocks cluttering the sides, threatening to tear anything that came near to pieces like the teeth of a ravenous beast. The knight paused. How will I get down this? He felt a heavy thump on his shoulder, and his question was answered for him as something pushed him over the side. He was battered from all sides by the rocks as his remaining torch fell quickly out of sight, and was extinguished. The spikes nearly penetrated his armor, but it thankfully remained intact. The pummeling stopped, and the knight fell the rest of the distance to slam down on the cave floor with a sickening crunch. He felt a dull, aching, pain in his chest, and his body was bruised all over.
The knight lay facedown on the ground, slowly recovering from the pain and shock. He immediately started to feel around for his torch, but stopped as he noticed that there already was a light source in the cavern. It was fairly dim, not quite the usual shade, and he couldnt see it clearly from his prone position, but it was enough to make sight possible.
Groaning, he rolled over and stared into the eyes of Death.
With a look of terror, he sat up and backpedaled with his hands and feet. When he got six feet away, his mind re-orientated itself and he realized that the face was that of a skeleton, clad in dull red armor fashioned of many interlocking rings of metal. He dismissed the corpse as nothing out of the ordinary, and studied his new surroundings while he caught his breath and rested. He was in a cavern about thirty feet in diameter. More skeletons rested in a small pile near where he landed, obviously killed by the fall. Near him was a large pool of water, maybe sixteen inches deep and twelve feet wide, and complete with a small waterfall flowing from the ceiling. But perhaps most important of all was a glowing book set on an onyx pedestal. The book did not give off a bright glow or even a faint yellow one. Instead, it gave off a sickly green light reminiscent of some fluorescent mushroom from the Dark Forest. Its cover was the color of a starless night, and its title was written in human blood, red and still warm, on the cover.
The knight did not even need to look at the words to know what book this was. It was the Necronimicon, the book believed to hold the secrets of death over life, and of unlife over death. It was said to contain words of power designed to give the reader a place among the gods of the underworld. Its pages were ones made from human skin, its bindings were the shards of human bone, and the ink used to write its unholy secrets was the blood of newborn babies.
All the more reason it will make a fitting sacrifice before God, the knight thought. Grunting from the exertion on his wounded body, he unstrapped the massive broad sword and strode towards the pedestal holding it in a two-handed grip, determined to destroy the dark writ then and there.
He stopped in his tracks, his ears straining to here some slight, previously unheard sound. Something was not right.
The knight turned and looked toward the waterfall. The flowing water made no sound. As he watched, a small white lump dropped from the ceiling, following the path of the waterfall and dropping neatly into the pool. Then, new water ceased to emit from the caverns top, and the now suspended column lethargically settled down to the water.
The water started to quiver, unnoticeably at first then faster, and more violently. All at once, the pool shot up into the air, probably tripling in size.
At once the knight knew what he faced. A shapeshifter.
Though they were no more than small, disembodied brains when dry, when in water they assimilated it into their bodies and gained control of its basic properties, increasing its density, expanding, or changing its shape into a virtually infinite amount of different forms. With a shapeshifter, only its intelligence limited how far it could stretch the laws of physics, and it was well know that an average shapeshifter was ten times smarter than the greatest sage ever.
Shapeshifters were remarkably dangerous when alone, but in packs they reigned near supreme. Just over two years ago, a family of ten shifters that had been roaming the Northern seas destroyed hundreds of ships and slaughtered thousands of sailors before mercenary magi had killed the beasts using a massive boiling spell.
Thankfully, the knight thought, this thing is just about four times my size. It is no match for a warrior of God. He raised his broad sword in preparation for the monsters attack.
The shapeshifter wasnt ready for him yet. It first shrank to a humanoid form, though it was still nearly eight feet tall, which possessed two very sharp blades instead of arms. Where its eyes should have been, there were two hollow cavities, and behind them was the white blob.
The shapeshifter struck. Its left blade flew towards the knight from the side, giving him barely enough time to block the blow. The force of the impact caused him to stagger to the side, only to catch the other blade in his stomach. The impact knocked the wind out of him and flung him in the air to smash into the cave wall, but the armor and the body were still intact.
The knight staggered to his feet to see that he shifter had fashioned a long spear out of its right appendage, and was charging towards him. He swung the broad sword in a horizontal arc, batting the spear into the air, and reversed his swing to strike the monster full in the chest. The huge blade clove through the things sternum making a sickening thwop sound, and passed to the other side without any resistance at all.
The shapeshifter did not slow its charge.
It crashed into the knight at full speed, but, instead of knocking the knight to the ground, the beast flowed around him, soaking him to the skin with its magically altered body fluids. The knight felt a bitter chill rush up his spine, and tried to turn to face his antagonist. He couldnt. His muscles would not respond. He concentrated on his faith in his God, calling out for divine intervention. Long ropes of dense water slithered up each his arms feeling his every breath, his every involuntary twitch. Up to his neck they reached, slithering into his helm, straining to find the narrow passageway that leads from the ear to the brain, for that was the ultimate goal of the shapeshifter, to devour an enemys mind and thus gain their thoughts, feelings, and intellect.
Suddenly, whether by an act of Heaven, the natural limitations of the shapeshifters powers, or the sudden strength and force of will brought on by a fanatic in a religious fervor, the knight regained feeling in his arms. He swung his sword in a broad arc behind him, rending the shifter in two. The thing howled in agony as its lower body fell away in a useless downpour of water, and tried to crawl up the knights back to finish its fight quickly. The knight rushed backwards, slamming the shapeshifter into the cavern wall and breaking its hold on him. The shifter formed several small legs from its reserves of liquids and skittered to where it had been sliced in two by the knight and attempted to absorb as much of the fluids as possible before the knight attacked again.
The knight saw the shifters plan and rushed it, sword held high and ready to smash down upon the monster. The shapeshifter looked up with vacant eye sockets, and created dozens of rope-like tendrils with which it grabbed onto the cavern walls and pulled itself up using the natural properties of water. The knight hacked at the thing as it retreated to the ceiling, but his blows could do nothing to the shifter, which was now lighter and more ethereal than a ghost. The thing spread across the top of the cavern like a giant spider, its tentacles covering all available space. For, an instance, it hung there, the light of the Necronimicon shining into its gelatinous mass and sending sparkles of blue-green light around the cave.
Then it dropped.
The knight was covered in freezing, suffocating, malevolent water. He had not even had time to take a full breath before the thing was on him, clenching his chest, trying to force him to expel the last bit of precious air that sustained the body. He could not see through his viscous opponent, his entire world was an opaque light blue haze. He swam through the thing, maybe moving several feet, maybe a few, maybe remaining completely motionless. Stroke after stroke he swam, carrying the sword in one hand, his lungs on fire for air.
The body grew weary. Its arms slowed to a mere crawl. The world was still light blue, his lungs still burned. The knight wondered how the body could still move after being immersed in the shifter. A gift from God, perhaps? With renewed vigor at the thought of divine intervention, the body surged forth. His hand sprang out from the gooey surface. The hand with his sword and his head soon followed. He gasped for air and blinked his eyes. He could see! With both arms, he raised the massive sword and brought it down hard on the creature. The blade ripped through with ease, and a low howl emanated from the wounded beast. The sword crashed down a second time, and a third, and a fourth, until the the water subsided and flowed to the opposite side of the cave to reform near the Necronimicon.
The blob once again took on a vaguely humanoid form, except instead of arms, it had hundreds of tentacles, none larger than a strand of human hair, but each nearly six feet long. They formed a wreath around the shapeshifter, constantly twitching and shaking as though it was a mass of snakes on a gorgons head.
The knight could not help but scoff at the stupidity of the shapeshifter.
Do you think that you can defeat a warrior of God with naught but string?
A sound came, like bubbles rising from a spring, and the thing spoke. Almost anything can be used to destroy an overconfident fool.
The knight roared at charged the shapeshifter, enraged at the beasts blasphemy. He swung the broad sword at the beast, severing dozens of tiny tendrils. But the rest darted out.
They slipped through the joints in his finely crafted plate mail, and found a way through the threads of his undercoat. They slithered into his skin, stinging like a thousand pin pricks. Then, just as suddenly as they had struck, they slipped away to merge with the shifters body.
The knight took several steps forward, swinging his sword and bellowing all the while. The shapeshifter stepped back from the fierce onslaught, merely inches out of the knights reach, and waited.
The knight raised his sword for a finishing blow on the shifter. The sword stood above his head, ready to fall.
It fell.
It was not swung by the knight, but fell. The metal rang as it struck the ground. The knight slumped to his knees, all the while struggling to remain standing. He scooped up the sword, and stood with one leg, the other still dragging. He crumpled into a pitiful heap on the ground. The knight did not reach for the sword again, but lifted himself to a kneeling position and felt his chest, for something was tugging at his heart.
The knight looked at his hands.
They were completely red.
Blood ran down his breastplate, turning the once shining steel to a dull, dark shade of red. It was the red of human blood. Within seconds, his chest was covered with blood, and not an inch of steel was still exposed to the air.
The body was defeated.
The body was defeated, and the soul was vulnerable.
The knights vision narrowed. It was as if he could see the the shapeshifter, but he was looking through a tunnel. He saw the far off thing grow two tentacles, large and fat, and advance toward him.
His vision disappeared. All was black, blacker than the long tunnel, blacker than the forest at night. Where all previous darkness had been mere shadows, this was true darkness. He would never see light, never see shadow again, only the void.
The body grew cold. Two snakes slithered up the head, probing into the body. The mind, previously kept still by the will of the soul, felt the presence of another Mind, more powerful than itself. It felt a new Body, and a new Soul.
The body died. The mind was devoured by the Body and Mind, assimilated into the Minds collection.
The soul had no haven. It would rise, to join with God in Heaven, to sit by his side and drink the wine, to eat the feast.
The soul was stopped. The Soul called it. The soul descended to the Soul, to see that the Soul was not just a Soul but a multitude of souls, and it reached for the soul. The Souls embraced, and the soul joined the Soul, to take its part in the Body and Mind.
To do its part in guarding the Necronimicon.
(This message has been edited by Celchu (edited 12-20-2002).)
: That's just the way things have to happen.
I've got a sort of anatomical description of the shapeshifter worked out, and it explains how it works, and how it's "hurt" by the knight's attacks.