This story is from the same universe as my stories The Harpies of Nangong, The Summit, The Death of the Ice Princess and Unmoving - Broken. It's self-sufficient, so you don't need to read the others to understand this one and they can be read in any order. I leave it up to you.

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Dark Sealing Sword — A Call from the Void

—by @CryptoSharon

The cries for help were too loud! They pierced his mind and hurt his soul. Through the stone forest and into the wooden nest. Carlos crossed the strenous path hastily. It was hard for him to keep his eyes open, as his head hurt so much. With every step, rocks resounded with cracks, hitting each other, adding to his despair. Suddenly, trees enveloped him, but he kept running. The trees reached the skies and pierced the clouds, and his steps now hit the soft grass and made almost no noise.

The voice kept strumming in his brain, like a sad, out-of-tune flute, breaking him while he ran desperately to find it.

"Save me, save me, save me, save me", the voice resounded louder and clearer with each step.

Dark, so dark. It was not supposed to go like this. A bullet through her brains was all it took. She thought they weren't for real when they asked her for her purse. Why didn't they just take it? Why did they fear a weak girl so much? But they shot her, and now she was dead. She thought there would be nothing, but the first thing she felt were hands grabbing her and dragging her through the road. Then, she saw their faces: dark skin, long black hair, toothpicks piercing their noses. They spoke in a weird rhotic language, but she understood it perfectly.

Dark, so dark was this room. She had to wait now, but she didn't want to. She was going to be given to "Bumba", and god knows who that was. At least there was a kind man who gave her food and water and apologized. He treated her well, but still did nothing in the face of her impending doom. It didn't matter during the day, when the white sun shone through her window. But in this moonless world, nights were so dark, so all she had was her thoughts and her voice.

"Save me, save me, save me, save me", she whispered and cried, letting despair take over her, dismay, impotence. She still kept a little hope that her almost silent cries would be heard. She gave them force with her mind and pushed them out into the void. She did not know that the void was called the nether here, and that Carlos was the only person who could hear it.

The tall trees had been cut down in an oval valley. It was a clearing and in the center was a city walled with strong and resilient wood. The door was open. Carlos felt the sad pleading destroying his sanity. He could not focus on anything other than trying to force the voice out and finding the direction. But he had found it. It was here. In this city, lost in the void. It was dark. He barely saw the moving silhouettes around him. He moved quietly, but the ringing voice struck him at the wrong moment and he moved and pushed a trunk.

Suddenly, screams, physical screams and squawks filled the sky. He recognized them instantly. Cruel harpies. Who kept harpies in a city? Barbarians. Something cut his abdomen and he retreated. He saw claws. He pulled his sword and was instantly soothed, carried by the trance of war. He saw around and everything was almost clear. Almost, there were no faces, just claws, spears. He cut them all. The nest's wooden spears were hard as metal, but he cut through them. He kept cutting, slashing, avoiding claws and getting pierced too.

In the end, he had forgotten. He saw his whole body and clothes damp with blood. The sword talked to him, but he regained a bit of consciousness to block it. The sword was in its scabbard again and the screams pierced his head harder than ever. These were not pleading screams. These were terrified screams, tearing his consciousness apart. His brown hair trembled each time she screamed. She needed to quiten down!

Terror filled her lungs as she saw the rolling head of the priest in front of her. Beside it stood a man. Only his outline could be made out, but he felt as if his stare drilled through her. She could not think, she was paralyzed while her mind emitted her terrible fear. She was grabbing her legs and trembling beside her stone bed, still chained by the neck to the wall.

"Shut uuupp!!" came a scream, but she could barely hear it. She just watched him approach and break her chains. His hands carried a terrifying aura, darker than night. Yet they grabbed her. She could feel the cold weather taking the shape of needles, freezing her.

The screams finally died down. His thoughts could finally settle. The girl was lying on the ground. He was going to walk away now that she was free, but how could he let this being who could reach him so easily walk away? He would be called again. He was sure. He carried her to his cave and was welcomed by his three companions. Ron, a fat, hat-wearing country man; Tok, a mute, cross-eyed, skinny guy; and Eve, as Carlos liked to call her, a simple-minded Neanderthal lady.

There were no flames here. They could only bear the cold with their world-provided life essence. It was not warm enough to enjoy. Barely enough to live. He put the girl down and went to sleep.

The melody of the day woke her up. A bird sung, the sun shone on her face. The wind moved the leaves of the trees. Her face was caressed by something soft. "My bed?", she opened her eyes. She was lying on a field of moss, just big enough for a human to sleep. A warm feeling filled her body. She was free. Then, she trembled at the memory of the day before and got up with a jump, looking around.

She saw him there. The scary man was not that bad under the light of the sun. He was sitting with his eyes closed, four people forming a square looking at the centre, as if meditating. When she stepped toward them, they all mysteriously turned toward her. Her heartbeat sped up.

Lily was her name. Carlos sat with her at the center of a frozen lake. She felt observed. He watched her deep-blue eyes. They reminded him of sapphires, and her face was paper white with a few freckles. She reminded him of something, made him feel a deep melancholy, like a whisper of old times imbuing him with a long-lost feeling. Then she spoke with a dream-inducing voice, sweet like music.

"Thank you for saving me", she said. His heart tightened remembering the torment he was feeling before. "Why did you kill that man?", she asked remembering the bloody sight of the man who brought her food on the floor. While he had conspired to keep her locked up, he was the only one who seemed to care and sympathise with her.

"I never think when I kill. I cannot", he responded with an unexpectedly young voice and looked tenderly to his side, where his scabbard lied.

They sat quietly for a moment, listening to the world. Then he added. "It called me, like you did. Take it, it's soothing", he said and took off the scabbard.

When she put her hands on it, a thousand screams filled her head and she added hers to the choir. She dropped it at once, but it felt like an eternity.

"Wow, there", he said.

"Those voices are of the dead!" she yelled as she stood up. "How can something so evil exist?"

"Yes, how can you tell? They entrance me, they call for company, they soothe my soul", he spoke quickly and almost without stops.

"Then you're disgusting!", she said and ran away.

He stood there, with his arm standing forward where he had taken the scabbard. "Disgusting?", he thought. "Am I evil? To be despised by the living?"

Nothing died in Hell, but souls could be entrapped. They were all on his waist, used as tools to open way in this cruel world. He thought about this for days, devastated by the rejection. But instead of the feeling ceasing with time, it grew on him.

"Evil?", he kept thinking. He was certainly a freak, a fault, the foul embrace of death in life, a jailor, a tormentor. Was this sword the truest Hell and not the world he lived in? Was he the Devil, capturing the souls of sinners? He could not stand it. No, he could not stand the way she had left. The way she had ruptured his self-image.

He imagined her beauty, then thought of her rejection, and of his own darkness, his own selfishness, and saw nothing more than impurity. He ran to the mountain, threw the sword on the way, in the deepest pit he could find, closed it with a rock, then kept running and running, then walking. He walked for days under the sun, under total darkness, under rain and snow, until he reached the summit.

He smiled bitterly. This was the tallest mountain. If this couldn't kill him, nothing would, and he would not trap his soul. He knew he deserved it, but he was not brave enough, so he jumped and fell for such a long time that his face felt frozen on the way down. He crossed the red sunset clouds and kept falling down until the crack resounded in the whole valley. His body splashed and broke to pieces and his cranium burst open like a water balloon.

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All images are public domain, taken from Pixabay

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