The Lost Ruins, Chapter 7

The sun was just starting to set a day later when they first sighted the Syrneth ruins.
At first, Elena wasn’t sure what she was looking at. She could see some distance ahead of the expedition, courtesy of a raised hill that they were crossing, but the ruins appeared to be nothing more than a sickly-looking patch of trees at this distance. Those trees grew thinner and patchier as they got farther away. It wasn’t until Nic came to a halt and pointed ahead of her that she realized what she was looking at.
“That’s our destination,” Nic said. “You can just barely see the top of the Waldemar Estate from here.”
Elena shielded her eyes from the setting sun and carefully peered in the direction that Nic was pointing. With the light blocked, she could finally see what appeared to be the top of a crumbling roof poking out of the treetops. “That building, there?”
Nic nodded. “The Waldemar Estate is inside the Syrneth ruins that you’re looking for.”
“Then we made it!” Elena felt her heart leap into her throat, as it always did when she reached her goal. “After so long!”
“We’re not there yet,” Nic cautioned. “And what’s worse, it’s going to be dark soon.”
“What’s worse about that?” Marcus asked, walking up to the pair. “If we’re here, then we can just wait till the morning to go in, right?”
“The problem is the vampirs who live inside the Estate,” Nic explained. “Blood drinkers are nocturnal.”
“You’re saying that they are real? It’s not just a story to scare people off?”
“Marcus, think about that question for a second,” Elena said. “You’ve seen the things in this forest. The mist, the ghouls.”
Marcus frowned, embarrassed. “You’re right. I’m sorry. I just sort of hoped that maybe this time the stories were wrong.”
“You and so many others,” Nic commented. He turned away from the setting sun to face Elena. The light of the setting sun played across his features, finding the crags left by his angular features as he regarded them. The lengthening shadows seemed to highlight the dark tunic and mail armor he wore. His silhouette, especially his broad shoulders and twin swords, seemed to loom over Elena. The overall effect was to make him quite intimidating. “We need to decide how we are going to approach this.”
“Obviously, if the Estate is home to blood drinkers, we avoid it.” Elena glanced back in the direction of the manor house for a moment. “We want to explore the ruins, but don’t need to get too close, right?”
“We might not have a choice,” Nic disagreed. “Once the vampirs know we are here, they will come for us. We can’t keep a group like this hidden for long.” He frowned. “Our best bet would be to attack the manor during the day, when the vampirs are at their weakest. If we can destroy most or all of them before nightfall, we can explore the ruins at our leisure.”
Something passed over Nic’s features as he said that. Elena only just noticed it, and she wanted to dismiss it as a trick of the deepening twilight, but her instincts told her otherwise. Something was bothering their guide. She decided that this was not the time to press him about it, but she resolved to ask him later.
“Is getting into a confrontation with the vampirs completely necessary?” Elena asked. “I didn’t come here to kill off vampirs.”
“If you don’t want them attacking us while we’re trying to explore the ruins, then yes.” Nic frowned again. “Unfortunately, this is going to be an ‘us-or-them’ situation.”
“What if we only go into the ruins during the day?” Marcus asked. “If we retreat out of the vampirs’ territory during each night? Would that keep them from attacking us?”
“Vampirs are not territorial like other predators,” Nic explained. “They can think and feel, just like us. And they will never pass up an opportunity to feed on so many people. Unlike a vampir trying to hide in a village somewhere, they don’t have to hold back out here. No one is expecting us to come out once we’ve entered the ruins, so they can drain us all, down to the man.” He shook his head. “It won’t be pretty. Unless we strike first, we will all be killed.”
Elena turned back to face the Estate, a frown deepening on her face. Nic and Marcus continued to discuss, but she ignored them while she stared out at their destination. They were so close now that she could practically feel it, but now she was unsure. Facing the threat directly, it was much harder to dismiss the advice of the only person in their party who knew anything about what they were getting into. Doing so seemed completely foolhardy. But something about the way Nic was acting, something about how he seemed determined to attack the vampirs head-on made her pause. She could not put her finger on it, but something was off. Perhaps it had something to do with whatever shadow she had seen cross Nic’s face earlier. All of this added up to something that just did not sit right with her.
She forced her instincts down for the time being. Nic had gotten them this far with as few casualties as possible, and he obviously knew what he was doing. She decided to trust him on this point as well. Now was not the time to start doubting anyone in the party, let alone the one who was directing them to the ruins.
“We will go after the Estate tomorrow,” Elena decided. She returned her attention to Marcus and Nic, who had stopped their discussion when she had spoken. “If you really think that this is the safest way to get into the ruins, then I will trust you.” She made sure to look into Nic’s eyes when she said that.
Nic held her gaze, though his reply was slightly longer in coming than she had expected. “It is the only way.”
Elena kept her eyes fixed on Nic’s for another few moments, then nodded. “Very well, it’s decided. We will need a place to make camp for the night that will keep us from being discovered too early.”
It did not take long to find such a place. Nic and a few others scouted around near the base of the hill and discovered a sheltered depression that had enough space between the trees to allow them to set up a full campsite without requiring a clearing. This would prevent anyone from easily spotting their camp from a distance. Even with the location, Nic suggested that they not light any fires during the night, trusting that the moonlight from the unexpectedly clear skies would give them enough light to see by. They also made sure to post additional watches, and Elena retired for the night feeling at least moderately secure.
It was some time later that night when she awoke, hearing what sounded like a woman’s voice whispering indistinctly. She opened one eye and glanced around, seeing nothing inside the tent with her. She listened to the voice, trying to determine if it was the voice of one of her companions. After a few moments, she decided that she did not recognize the voice, and crept out of her bedroll. She had slept in her clothes, including the digger’s coat, so all she had to do was slide her bow and quiver onto her back, attach her climbing axes to her belt, and pick up a knife to be fully armed. She moved to the entrance to her tent and listened once again, hearing the whispers moving indistinctly outside her tent. It almost sounded like a woman sobbing.
Elena carefully pulled the flap of her tent aside and looked out. Her eyes immediately fell on the source of the whispers. A tall woman wearing what appeared to be a grey tunic and trousers moved all but silently between the tents, her head in her hands. The moonlight fell on her in such a way that she appeared to glow faintly, especially her ebony hair, which seemed to reflect the light in a particularly luminescent way. She had no visible weapons, though Elena did not relax in the slightest. She wondered how the woman had managed to get past the watches, and she considered briefly that they had been knocked out or killed like on the night of the bandit raid just before they had entered the Walder. She discarded this possibility almost immediately. There were far too many watches tonight to have been taken care of so completely.
The woman moved almost aimlessly, as though she was unaware that she was standing in the middle of a camp. As she swayed back in the direction of Elena’s tent, Elena got a chance to actually make out a bit of the words that the woman was whispering.
“My boy, my boy, where have they taken you…?”
The woman was moving towards Marcus’s tent. Elena watched in mute shock as the woman moved towards the entrance and then passed through without disturbing the fabric. Elena blinked, wondering if she was seeing things, perhaps some kind of waking dream or sleep delusion, and then Marcus screamed.
Elena sprinted out of her tent towards her friend, noticing out of the corner of her eye that Nic had emerged from his own tent and was also sprinting towards Marcus. Elena reached his tent first and ducked through the flap, skidding to a halt just inside.
The woman was gone.
Marcus knelt alone in the tent, his head bowed, and his hands on the ground. As Elena came to a halt inside the tent, he looked up, fixing her with eyes that now glowed white and seemed to leak mist at the edges. Elena drew back in horror at the sight. Marcus spoke, his voice now sounding like a combination of his own voice and that of the vanished woman’s.
“Where have they taken him? Where is my son?”
Nic burst into the tent and quickly looked around. Only after seeing that the tent was empty save for the two Avalons did he fix his gaze on Marcus himself. The sight of Marcus’s white mist-filled eyes caused him to swear once, a thick coarse Eisen word that Elena felt inclined to follow with several of her own.
“Ghost,” Nic muttered. “He’s been possessed.”
Marcus scrambled forward on his knees and grabbed at the bottom of Elena’s coat. He spoke again in that same disturbing double-voice. “They took him from me! They took my little Niels!”
“Go get the priest,” Nic said. He bent and managed to pry Marcus’s hands off of Elena’s coat. “Meet us just outside the camp on the east side. And be quick about it! His life depends on it!”
Elena nodded, turning at once to go and do as ordered. She was, at once, more terrified than she had ever been on this journey. Now it was Marcus’s life that was on the line, her best friend who was in danger. She would not let him be taken. She had to save him.
She reached Father Gálvez’s tent within two minutes. The priest was awake, standing in the entrance to his tent, his cross clutched in one hand. 
“What’s going on?” he asked as Elena drew near. “I heard a scream.”
“It’s Marcus,” Elena said breathlessly. “A ghost showed up and he’s been possessed.”
“Sweet Theus,” Father Gálvez muttered, putting his free hand to his mouth.
“We need you right away,” Elena said, growing slightly frantic. “I don’t know what a ghost does to someone that they’ve possessed.”
Gálvez nodded once, then turned and went back into his tent. He emerged seconds later with one of his holy books in hand. Luckily, he too had apparently slept in his clothes.
Together, Elena and the priest raced through the camp, towards the east side of the camp. As she went, a few of the expedition members wordlessly pointed them in the direction that Nic had gone. Elena had no time to give them any sort of thanks, as her mind was wholly focused on Marcus’s plight. After what felt like far too long of a time, they reached the camp perimeter and passed the men on watch there. Nic stood just within line-of-sight of the guards, spreading a paste from a flask along the ground. As they got closer, Elena saw that the paste formed a circle around Marcus, who paced energetically inside of the circle.
“They took him from me!” Marcus called out. “My boy, where are you?”
“What’s that?” Elena asked, noting the paste as Nic finished his circle.
Nic did not look up as he responded, instead inspecting his work. “Spectral Prison. It will keep the ghost confined while we work on it.”
Now that he had said the name, Elena remembered him mentioning the Unguent back in Kummerholt. “So, the ghost can’t cross the line?”
“No.”
“Why didn’t you use that earlier?”
Finished with his inspection, Nic finally looked up from what he was doing. “I don’t have enough to go around the whole camp. If I did, I would have used it.” He straightened up. “As long as we stay on this side of the circle and none of us break it, the ghost will not be able to get to us.”
“And the obvious problem?” Father Gálvez asked. “What about Mr. Cunningham himself? He’s on the wrong side.”
“Once you complete your exorcism, I’ll pull him out of the circle,” Nic said without missing a beat. “He’ll be safe from the ghost once he’s out here.” Nic grimaced. “Unfortunately, this is not my first experience with this. Be quick, Father. Ghosts can drain the life out of a person if not taken care of.”
Gálvez nodded. “I’ll go as fast as I can.” He opened his book and stepped up to the edge of the circle. He then raised his cross and began to chant in Castillian.
While he did so, Elena bounced nervously. It took the ghost inside Marcus a few seconds to notice the priest’s attempts, but when she did, she reared back, shrieking. “No! No! I have to find my boy!”
Father Gálvez barely looked up, continuing his chants and interspersing them with occasional holy gestures and holding his cross towards the possessed Marcus. Nic kept a close eye on the process, standing just outside the line while he waited. As the exorcism wore on, the ghost in Marcus shrieked louder and tried to fling herself out of the circle. Every time she got close, however, something seemed to fling her and Marcus back towards the middle of the circle. Eventually, she fell to the ground and clawed her way forward, spitting and cursing just inches from the border of the prison.
Elena was almost too distracted by the sight of her friend frantically digging his hands into the ground to notice the sounds of commotion coming from somewhere behind her. Reluctantly, she turned away from the exorcism to look back in the direction of the camp.
She did so at the very moment that the dark shape tore into the two guards and sent them sprawling in sprays of blood and severed limbs.
Whatever creature it was sprinted towards her without waiting around. In the mere seconds she had to react, she simultaneously reached for her bow with her right hand and one of her axes with her left. Realizing partway through the maneuver that the creature would be upon her before she could properly aim her bow, her right hand instead grabbed an arrow, pulling it free of her quiver while her left hand yanked one of her axes free of her belt. The creature was upon her a second later, and fear drove her melee arrow strike home. The arrow lodged itself in her attacker’s neck, and she quickly followed it up with a desperate axe strike that virtually decapitated the creature. Its momentum carried it forward, bowling her over even as it died.
She forced the creature off of her and scrambled to her feet. Nic whirled, just a bit too late to have been useful in the brief struggle. Father Gálvez stopped chanting, staring in horror at the beast that Elena stood over. She followed his terrified gaze. It was some kind of rotting corpse by the look of it, though Elena had never known a corpse to move so quickly or attack so fiercely. She noted the creature’s shriveled eye sockets and fleshless hands. It was covered in blood – both its own and from the guards it had killed before charging Elena.
“Sweet Theus,” Father Gálvez gasped.
Behind them, screams began to erupt from their camp. Nic jerked his head upwards, looking toward the camp as he drew his sword. He swore again. “Revenants! They must have found us anyway.” He began to move quickly towards the camp. “Finish up here! Get Marcus out of the circle, then get to safety! Stay out of the ruins!” He broke into a run, heading back towards the camp.
Elena turned back to Father Gálvez, who was staring down at the revenant with his mouth hanging open. “Father!” she shouted. He looked up at her. “We need to save Marcus! Finish the exorcism!”
For two seconds, the priest simply stared at her, unresponsive. Then he closed his mouth, tightened his grip on his cross, and nodded firmly. He turned back to the possessed Marcus, who had apparently decided to try and scuttle away to the far side of the circle, only to find that way just as blocked. When the priest began chanting again, the ghost inside Marcus moaned in agony.
“Please, no! Please, no! I have to find my son!”
Now that she had a moment to breathe, Elena swapped the axe in her hand for her bow itself. She drew three arrows from the quiver, nocked one, and kept the other two in her left hand for quick reloading. She kept a sharp watch for any approaching revenants. In only a few moments, another fast-moving creature came barreling out of the camp towards them. This time, Elena was ready. She sank two arrows into the creature while it was still a dozen feet away from her, leaving its body to collapse to the forest floor. Father Gálvez paused slightly in his chanting.
“Keep going, Father,” Elena reassured him while she drew two more arrows to replace the ones she had fired. “I’ll keep them off of us. Just warn me when you’re getting close so I can pull Marcus free.”
Gálvez did not interrupt his chanting to respond to her, but he indicated his understanding by a single nod before he turned back to face Marcus.
As he returned his attention to the exorcism, Elena heard something emerging from the underbrush behind her, and she spun on one heel, dropping to one knee as she did. A third revenant came out of the forest, angling directly for them. She loosed another set of arrows, and the beast collapsed like its fellows. Elena climbed to her feet just in time to shoot another arrow at a fourth revenant that emerged from the camp like a demon in the night. This time, her aim was just a bit off, and the revenant only twisted sideways when the arrow struck it. It quickly righted itself and charged forward at her again, and she drew another arrow from her quiver as quickly as she could.
She got the arrow onto her bowstring when the revenant was ten paces out. She reached full draw when it was five paces out. She sighted and released the arrow at a mere two paces away. Her arrow flew true to her aim, entering the shriveled left eye socket with enough force to exit the back of the skull. She dove aside to avoid the revenant’s charging form, only just evading it before it would have knocked her over again.
“Now!” Gálvez shouted, and Elena disengaged in order to race back to the circle. She reached it right as the priest slammed his book shut and held up the cross towards her possessed friend. He let out a final commanding bark of an order in Castillian, and the ghost inside Marcus shrieked one last time.
The two-voiced shriek ripped unnaturally into separate voices once more, the black-haired woman bursting out of Marcus like a person shedding their clothes. Now that she was looking at the ghost’s front for the first time, Elena could clearly see the red gash across her throat, evidence of the wound that had killed her. For a brief instant, both Marcus and the ghost hung vertically in the air, less than a foot separating them. Then Marcus toppled. The ghost screamed in rage as she reached out for him again, but Elena got there first. She caught Marcus less than a foot off of the ground, pulling him backwards, out of the circle with everything she had. She was forced to place one foot inside the circle in order to gain the leverage that she needed to lift him free without disturbing the circle itself. As she did, one of the ghost’s hands clutched at Elena’s arm, and she felt a deep chill spread through the limb. She fell backwards with a yell, pulling Marcus fully out of the circle. She landed on her back, with Marcus on top of her, but he was free.
Suddenly, Father Gálvez shouted out a single word. “Elena!” Anything else he might have been trying to say was cut off in a bloodcurdling scream and a sickly crunching sound.
“No!” Elena shouted, still pinned underneath Marcus and unable to do anything as another revenant – who had somehow approached while they were all distracted – sank its teeth and fingers into the priest. It shook the body, blood flying everywhere, then rounded on Elena and Marcus, likely drawn by the sound of her shout. From her position, she had no way to stop it, no way to defend either of them as it raced towards them. Marcus was still unconscious, and Elena’s right arm was pinned beneath him.
Then she noticed Marcus’s gun. He had a pistol tucked into a holster on his belt. It was dirty, coated with the remnants of the forest floor from when the ghost had crawled along with his body, and she had no idea if it was even loaded, but her hand went for it as the revenant reached them. She wrenched the weapon free with her left hand, pulling the hammer back as she brought the gun upwards. The revenant dropped its head to feed, and Elena pulled the trigger.
The sound of the gunshot ripped through the forest, momentarily deafening her. The revenant’s head exploded, illuminated by the flash of the gunpowder, and the rest of the body crumpled to the ground.
All of the energy she had left deserted her in an instant. The hand holding Marcus’s gun slumped to the side, and Elena sucked in great heaving breaths of air.
I’ve got to start carrying one of these things, she though as she dropped the pistol.
Marcus groaned from atop her, and she tried to get him off of her. She was only partially successful due to the added weight of the revenant. “Come on, you big lug, wake up,” she growled. “I need your help here.”
She did not know if he actually was conscious enough to listen to her, but she was able to move him off of her with a great heave, and she crawled out from under him. Once free, she hefted the revenant corpse off of Marcus and slung his arm over her shoulder. She pulled Marcus up, glancing over at where Father Gálvez had fallen. It was obvious from a single glance that he would not be getting up ever again. The revenant had nearly torn his head off when it had attacked him.
“Sorry Father,” Elena murmured. “Rest with Theus.”
A second quick glance confirmed that the ghost was still stuck inside the Spectral Prison and had gone back to sobbing quietly to herself. It seemed that it was now safe enough to try and get Marcus away from the location of the fight.
“We need to get out of here, Marcus,” Elena muttered. “Can you hear me?”
“I… yes…” Marcus’s voice was weak and shaky.
“Come on, you need to help me. Just try to move your feet a little, okay?”
“I’m… try… ing…”
With a great heave, Elena managed to get both of them moving. She gripped her bow in one hand, holding Marcus around the waist with that arm. Her other hand was occupied in keeping his arm draped across her shoulders as they moved away from the camp. Elena did not want to drop him into the middle of the battle that she could still hear taking place behind her. She also hoped that there wouldn’t be another revenant attack while she was trying to move Marcus, as she would be unable to defend either of them with Marcus hanging off of her back.
Luckily, fate was with them for the first time that night, and Elena managed to get both of them to a large tree just far enough away from the ghost that she felt certain that she could hide Marcus. She set him down against the tree as gently as she could, positioning him between some of the roots of the tree facing away from the pitched battle. “Okay, there we go,” she gasped. “Let me find some sticks and things to cover you with, and you’ll be fine.”
Marcus did not respond. In the shadow of the tree, she could not tell if he had slipped back into unconsciousness, though she could see that he was still breathing. She straightened up and looked back towards the camp. She saw a shadow running towards her, and she raised her bow, but relaxed once she saw that the approaching shadow was moving like a human instead of a revenant. One of the other expedition members was coming towards her, though whoever it was had too slender of a frame to be Nic.
“Hey!” Elena called out. “Help me out here! We need to get him moved somewhere safe!” With a second person helping, she was sure that they could get Marcus somewhere better than her hastily-chosen tree hiding spot. She turned back towards Marcus to lead her companion towards him. “Come on, we need to–”
A blinding pain erupted from the back of Elena’s skull, and she fell forward into pure white nothingness.