Warrior Priest of Dmon-Li - Brian Pratt [37]
“There’s no way to stop them!” he cries, letting loose with another blast that takes out another one. But as with the first one, the pieces begin to work themselves together.
From behind James, Miko screams as he sees a ghostly apparition at the top of the stairs staring down at him.
James turns and sees the man there, his mouth moving as if he’s trying to say something. The apparition reaches out to try to grab Miko.
Miko screams again and loses his balance. He falls and begins rolling down the stairs, knocking both Jiron and James off their feet.
As James falls, he twists and lands on his back with a thud. The medallion bearing the Star of Morcyth slips out of his shirt.
Suddenly, a bright light erupts from the medallion. The shattered pieces of the torsos begin to smoke and then dissolve into nothingness.
Realizing the effect the light from the medallion is having, he grabs it and holds it up high as the light from the Star fills the corridor with a blinding light. The torsos moving toward them down the corridor begin smoking when the light from the Star touches them. Continuing to shamble toward them, the torsos begin smoking more and more. The corridor begins to fill with a nauseating smoke as they dissolve. When the last piece of the last torso has dissolved into nothingness, the light goes out.
“What did you do?” Jiron asks.
“I didn’t do anything,” James replies, staring in wonder at the Star he holds in his hand. “It happened all on its own.”
Miko looks up to the top of the stairs, but the ghostly apparition is gone.
“Follow me,” James says as he gets up and turns to head back into the complex. As he starts to move, Miko asks hysterically, “What’re you doing?”
“If this worked on the torsos,” he explains, “maybe it’ll work on the pool.”
“Will that get rid of the barrier?” Jiron asks.
Shrugging, James says, “I don’t know. Let’s worry about one thing at a time.”
As they proceed through the levels back down to the pool, they come across several other torsos shambling their way along the corridors. Each time, James holds up the Star and each time it blazes forth with life, returning the torsos to nothingness.
Growing in confidence, James hurries toward the cavern. Upon leaving the stairs and entering the cavern with the pool, he again holds the Star up high. Blazing forth with the most intense light it has yet produced, it infuses the entire cavern with its blinding brilliance. As the light touches the pool, the water begins to writhe backward, as if it was trying to get away from intense light. James walks slowly closer to the edge of the dark water, holding the Star out in front of him.
The water of the pool begins to roil and bubble, steam comes off of it, filling the cavern with its horrid odor. The stench, as bad as it was before is nothing compared to what is coming off of it now. Rot, decay, and death seem to fill the cavern as the steam continues erupting from the pool.
The light from the Star seems to keep the steam at bay, dissolving it as it did the torsos. Jiron and Miko stand shoulder to shoulder with James as the lake continues to hiss and boil wherever the light touches it. The steam soon becomes so thick that it’s as if they’re standing in the middle of a fog bank.
Suddenly, a torso lurches out of the fog and reaches out for them, but quickly dissolves into nothingness when the light from the Star touches it.
The Star continues to work its effect upon the pool, the level slowly dropping as more of it steams and dissolves away.
When the pool is close to being empty, from overhead they hear a high pitched noise which is increasingly growing in volume. Looking up through the fog, they see the crystal begin pulsating wildly. And then suddenly, a shattering crack as the giant crystal overhead explodes into a million shards that rain down over the entire cavern.
With the shattering of the crystal, the resistance from the pool vanishes and