Guul'Zaroth Ch.17 - Broken

Otherworldly shrieks surged into the physical plane and sent tremors through the foundations of the mansion. Bodies quivered and shook, hardly able to keep their feet in its hellish presence.

The vampire princess had all but withdrawn into herself, face buried in her knees as she screamed. “Where is that noise coming from!”

“You don’t see it?” Rolf said in a frail whisper. His eyes were transfixed in the child’s direction but he wasn’t looking at him, not quite. Rolf stared past the boy and into something else, something not quite there. While to him it appeared as plain as the creature pinning him to the floor, nobody else was looking at it or even acknowledging it. Not a single one of them. They didn’t see it, how could they not see it when to him it was impossible to look at anything else. “All those mouths, screaming and screaming. There’s no end to them! They're everywhere!”

Laurelei lifted her face from her skirts and watched Rolf’s eyes, watched them lock into the empty space above the boy. “What are you saying?” she breathed

He tried to speak but his voice came out as a stammer. After a few stuttering, blathering attempts at forming words, he muttered something intelligible. “It’s better this way… It’s better that you don’t have to see it.”

Alone among them all, the doctor’s face was devoid of the dread that clouded Rolf’s and Laurelei’s features. “I have done it!” Foerster said in astonishment. On shaky legs, he walked toward the boy, his arms outstretched. “You have returned to us! Through my work this boy has clawed his way back to the world of the living!” The doctor moved within ten feet of the child, who had not even deigned to look in his direction, and stopped as if frozen in time. His voice escaped as a soundless breath and he stood in statuesque motionlessness for several seconds.

Slowly, blood began to trickle from his mouth and nose, his body shuddering and twisting as if being crushed by an invisible force.

The creature loosened its grip on Rolf and let out a disgruntled groan.

Head lolling to the side, the doctor's eyes darted around. It was the only sign that any life still existed in his body.

“Rrruhhhh!” the doctor's creature bellowed. Its mangled features twisted into something that resembled anger and it relinquished its hold on Rolf. With a dagger in hand it charged toward the boy in a limping dash.

Annoyance flashed across the child’s face, followed by a snarl. The wailing intensified and the moment the thing stepped near the doctor it crumpled up into a red, gushing mass of flesh and snapped bones, completely unrecognizable as the being it once was.

The doctor didn't move even an inch, he couldn't. His eyes just jammed shut and almost immediately, tears streamed down his cheeks.

Rolf pushed himself off the ground, swallowing hard and shivering at the gruesome spectacle that played out before him. "Laurelei," he said with a stammer, "what are we looking at?"

Face slick with sweat and her heartbeat thudding in her ears, Laurelei willed herself not to say it. Not to admit to herself and to Rolf what she already knew and what she had done, but willpower would only take her so far and reality came rushing forward. "A demon," she said in a weak, broken voice.

The thing smiled hatefully with the child's mouth. Saliva dripped from between dry, cracked lips and low rumbles escaped. It's little body hovered off the slab and drifted toward the ground. Its feet touched down softly but the stone floor looked as if it had been hammered by an ettin. Intricate webs of cracks stretched along the ground and the building rumbled with even the slightest of motions.

Rolf attempted to get to his feet but found Laurelei gripping his sleeve with a shaking hand.

"Stop," she said in as stern a voice as she could manage under the circumstances. "Do not try and fight it. It is no use. Armies of men have tried and failed to do what you are about to do."

Rolf grit his teeth together and slowly eased back down to his knee. "What are we supposed to do? There has to be a way to stop this."

"No. You saw what it did to them, didn't you? That was only the smallest, simplest fragment of a demon's power. All we can do is kneel and hope that it decides we're too insignificant to destroy us. Then we can only wait until it either bathes the entire world in blood and darkness or by some stroke of incredible fortune, something manages to stop it." Laurelei seemed to choke on something and sucked in a deep, shuddering breath. "People everywhere, my people, are going to suffer and die by the millions. All because I was weak."

Quietly, Rolf reached over to Laurelei, cupped her hand in his own and squeezed gently. "This isn't your fault," Rolf said in a voice so unusually soft, Laurelei questioned whether it belonged to him or not. His eyes trailed to the collapsed and crumpled frame of Dr. Foerster. "It's his." Releasing Laurelei's hand, Rolf stood up straight and willed his trembling legs to stay still. "I'll fix this."

"Rolf stop!" Laurelei pleaded but received no response. "Rolf, that is an order, get back here this instant! You are only going to make it angry!"

The young necronom made no sign that he could even hear his master as he stepped closer to the entity.

It seemed indifferent to Rolf's presence. Instead, its attention was locked firmly on its own form. It stared at its hands, turned them over and then sneered at the scrawny arms and torso it inhabited. "How frail a human form I find myself in," it said in the voice of a child but with the tones of something far older. It's words shook and trembled with fury, eager to escape.

Once it had finished appraising its own body, it took a vested interest in the beings around it. The aging, sickly and now irreparably damaged body of Dr. Foerster, the bloody mess that remained of his creation and the childlike body of Laurelei, seemingly little different than the one it currently inhabited. Then its eyes settled on Rolf. Tall, young, strong and best of all, undying. "Anger," it said as it took a slow, deliberate step forward. "I can feel it radiating from you. So much rage in your heart. As inaccurate as it might be to compare an Ancient One to a mere human, I would say that you and I are very much alike."

"He almost sounds calm when he talks with the kid's mouth. So why are all the others screaming? Why won't they stop?" Rolf thought to himself.

The demon continued. "You are a perfect vessel. I think I may take you."

"Rolf! Don't talk to it! A demon cannot possess your form unless you allow it. If you speak with it, it will deceive you into giving up your body!"

Rolf fell silent, brows knit and head bowed low. For several long moments, he stared at his feet and cupped a hand over his chin. "...What do I get out of it?" he said at last.

Laurelei's entire body seized up and her eyes widened to the size of dinner plates. "Rolf?"

The demon grinned from ear to ear. "Anything you desire."

"Don't listen him to him!" Laurelei screamed as she ran to Rolf's side and grabbed his arm. She tried with all her might to pull him away but she couldn't even make him budge. "He's lying to you, he is a demon, he will always lie!"

"Get off of me!" Rolf roared. With a hard shove, he forced the girl back and sent her stumbling off of her feet.

Lying on the ground, she stared in disbelief. "What are you doing!? Stop this Rolf, please!"

The little boy rolled its shoulders and seethed between its teeth. "I cannot deceive," it said. "A demon is bound to its word. Name your price."

Rolf sighed and ran a hand through his hair. "Alright, I'll allow you to possess my body. Under the condition that you let her live. You don't harm her under any circumstances!"

Laurelei's heart beat faster than it ever had in her life and she found herself wondering if she'd truly just heard what she thought she had.

With its tongue running along its lips and its body trembling, the demon spoke again. "What is one mortal life when I have all of Guul'Zaroth to feast upon. I agree to your terms."

In that moment, both Rolf's and the child's body fell limp and collapsed to the floor. The screaming stopped, the shaking stopped, everything stopped for a few utterly still seconds.

Rolf and the lifeless child sprawled next to one another, his body as motionless as a corpse under normal circumstances. Then he convulsed and his back arched. The screaming started again, surging back in full force, the chorus of demonic wails was joined by Rolf's own agonized shrieks. A mixture of fury and pain coursed together and demonic energy seemed to radiate from his body. It burned scarlet red, swirling and flickering like an intangible, eldritch force enveloping him.

If the demon's presence was powerful before, it was crushing now. Laurelei could barely stand under the renewed force of its anger. It took all the strength in her arms avoid collapsing face first into the stone floor and bloodying her nose. "Rolf!" she screamed. "Why! Why did you do this to yourself! To me!" Laurelei punched the ground, bruising her knuckles and sending tremors of pain flashing across her hand. She didn't care, she couldn't care, not right now. "How could you disobey me!? You know that I can just relinquish the spell and..." she stopped in mid sentence her mouth agape. "...end you," she said, finishing the sentence. Her eyes suddenly jammed themselves shut and her fangs clenched together. She summoned up yet more strength she didn't even know she possessed and got back to her feet. "Is... is that what you want? Is that why you let this happen?"

Rolf sat braced on his hands and knees, throwing his head back and forth and frothing at the mouth.

"You're fighting right now. You're keeping it suppressed and it is destroying you." Laurelei's voice was so soft, so close to breaking but she continued. "You must be suffering more than I can even possibly imagine and now you want me to kill you! You were willing to give up your own life to correct my mistake! You would die for me again!?" She sounded almost angry now, eyes sparkling and wet as she clenched her little hand into a tight fist. "You are just too stupid for your own good! I am not finished with you! You are still my servant and I will not allow you to die! Not yet, not until I say so!"

Rolf's eyes centred on Laurelei, teeth clenched so tight that blood dripped from his gums, trickled over his lip and splashed onto the floor.

In the middle of all the commotion, the door burst open and Nigel stomped inside, Bellringer in hand. "What the hell is going on in here!" he bellowed as he tried to appraise the situation as best he could.

"Nigel!" Laurelei snapped. "We are dealing with a crisis in here. Where have you been!"

"Sleeping off half a dozen casks of wine that tasted like piss, until the damned house starting shaking! Care to explain all this?"

"No time, Rolf is possessed and I need you to hold him down!"

"Right," Nigel declared with a nod. He appeared baffled but cooperated nonetheless and approached the prone young man.

He reached toward Rolf with a meaty fist but suddenly the necronom sprang to his feet and viciously swatted the incoming hand away.

"Skreeee!" Nigel squealed as sharp pain coursed through his cloven hand. The simple parry felt like it had cracked the bone. Only just as the pig was recovering from the deflection, Rolf thrust both palms forward and into Nigel's voluminous belly. The strike sent ripples through the pig man's bulging fat and knocked him off his feet! He soared away in an arc before smacking into the far wall back and collapsing on his side with a loud groan.

"Uhf! Rolf my boy, I don't recall you being quite that powerful when last we met in battle," Nigel said through wincing pain. He pushed himself up to his feet, one arm draped over his stomach and the other braced against the wall to keep himself standing.

Laurelei growled and pounded her fist into the wall repeatedly. "No! No, no, no, no, no! I will not lose him to you!"

His head jerked left and right and his hands yanked at his hair, all the while wailing at the ceiling. Between all of Rolf's wordless bellows and babbling in dead languages, Laurelei could almost make out something resembling human speech. "Kiiiiillll meeeee!" Then, he twisted around to stare into the portal. His empty eyes transfixed themselves on the rip in reality, the tear between the material and astral planes. Shoulders heaving, he forced his jaw shut, his screams coming out muffled between his teeth, and then broke out in a run toward the gate.

"No! Nigel, stop him!" said Laurelei

Despite severely doubting his chances of being able to do just that, Nigel pursued with surprising fervour.

Rolf didn't hesitate for even a moment as he dove headfirst into the other world and disappeared from view but Nigel wasn't far behind. The massively muscled arm of the pig man lunged in after Rolf, trailing him by only a second, and latched onto something solid. Then the screaming started again.

Rolf's cries were more rattling than ever before. He even overpowered the wail of the demon with his ear splitting screams. It was unlike anything Laurelei had ever heard before, a noise so anguished and completely stripped bare of restraint or humility.

"I have his ankle!" cried Nigel. "I-I can barely hold him, something is pulling on my arm!" He struggled with every ounce of his own might to maintain his footing, to avoid falling in and seeing for himself what had torn so viciously at Rolf's soul.

"There's a chance," Laurelei said softly. "Nigel! Do not let go under any circumstances!" In moments she had dashed toward the portal, skirted around it and scooped up the errant paintbrush. Her attention turned toward the large sigil surrounding portal and she nervously bit down on her bottom lip. With frantic hands and yet still meticulous attention to detail, she went about altering the symbols on the sigil, scrubbing away some and adding others here and there.

"Lady Lockheart! I can't do this for much longer!" said Nigel.

"Please, just a little more time!"

Before Nigel knew it, Laurelei was scrambling up his back, using his belt for leverage. Soon, she stood perched on his shoulder and went about making a few swipes of her brush at the top of the circle. With just a few final swipes, the demonic shrieks ended, replaced only by Rolf's own.

"Now, pull him out!" said Laurelei.

Nigel nodded and reeled back with all his might, exhuming Rolf from the beyond and dumping his body onto the ground.

Laurelei circled around to Nigel's opposite shoulder, licked her thumb, and swiped away a wide star symbol at the peak of the circle. With a loud whir, the gate vanished into itself, leaving only smooth grey stone in its wake.

The whole room was quiet now, relatively speaking. Rolf lay on his back, gibbering and whispering to himself, in his own voice and his own language now.

"Put me down, now!"

Nigel quickly reached up, hand spread open, and Laurelei stepped into his palm. He lowered her to the ground and she immediately hopped down and dropped to her knees at Rolf's side. She clasped one of his hands in her own and squeezed it tight. "Rolf, I'm here," she cooed in a sweet voice. One would be hard pressed to believe Laurelei could even produce such a tone.

"L-Laurel?" Rolf asked in shock. His eyes couldn't focus, they just darted around, searching for nothing and finding only warped shapes. "Years... So long since I heard your voice." His words were hoarse and dry, his throat ragged from screaming.

"I-it's okay. I did... You did it." She bowed her head low and pressed his hand to her cheek while sniffling softly.

Rolf replied with only muttered nonsense, only the occasional words coming through. Most of it was mixed cries of 'No', 'pain', 'and stop.'

"Shhhh," Laurelei hushed Rolf and inched closer to him. "It's okay, just rest now."

Nigel placed a hand on the girl's shoulder. "What's happened to him?"

"His mind is broken," Laurelei said in cracked voice.

"What can we do for him? Lady Lockheart, how do we proceed?"

She shook her head slowly. "I have no idea."