Page 41 of Spectral Seas (Spectral Worlds #2)

A T THE FOOT of the last step was a broad empty landing, and to the right, a tall brightly lit archway from beyond which came the chants and screams. The three stopped a few steps above, just short of the arch.

Though invisible to the Indici, Abby remained cautious. Rather than bolt into the room, he slowly knelt forward to poke his head past the edge of the arched doorway where he found a small natural cavern—and the missing monks.

With acute detail, his optical augments layered over the occupants of the cave and its features. At the back of the hollow, a shelved wall held rows of glowing blue canopic jars. At the cave’s center, the source of the burning fumes: a high rimmed crater of fiery blue molten lava, its fuchsia tinged halo illuminating a stalactite covered ceiling. A few stalagmites speared up from the bottom of the cavern, but most of the floor had been cleared for various devices of torture—stocks, an iron maiden, and others. A series of rectangle augments overlaid the reptoids in the room. To the right, in a large metal barred holding pen, knelt two dozen chanting monks. And to the back, partially hidden from Abby’s oculars by the glow of the magma—the screaming monk and his captors. The tortured reptoid was bound to a large, angled table—a rack. Two Indici in peculiar hooded leather robes stood near the restrained monk, whispering something to their captive that Abby couldn’t make out, while two others in the leather warrior garb of the jailers sat at a table to the far left beside the shelves.

Abby turned to the Umbra behind him to report what he found. He tapped his chin, then shook his head—no chin-chip. Leta nodded. He pointed through the wall toward the cavern, held up four fingers, then stepped down onto the landing to the front of the open archway. He gestured for Soren and Leta to follow, then entered the cave.

Once across the threshold, the three stopped for a second scan. Abby waved Leta toward the caged pen, and for Soren to follow him over to the rack.

Though out of sight, Abby’s spectral shift was slight, not enough to escape the searing radiant heat of the stewing blue magma, and as he and Soren crept past the cauldron crater, it bit at the bare flesh of his exposed hands, cheeks, and neck. Abby jerked up his collar, but it was of little help.

As he drew closer to the Indici at the rack, their whispers became audible. They were speaking in an eldritch tongue, but he didn’t need his tech to translate their words. Though he’d never witnessed it, he recognized the ritual from his studies. The torturers were inquisitors and they were reciting a familiar incantation, a statement of prosecution and to insinuate and elicit forced confession.

Abby and Soren stopped beside the rack.

One inquisitor stood at the bound monk’s head while the other stood at its feet. As they took turns in chanting verse, they began to focus a high-pitched psionic blast onto the bound monk, the residual of which ebbed into Abby’s frontal lobe. As the psionics intensified, the inquisitor at the head waved a clawed hand over the racked victim, and as his hand circled round and round above the bound monk’s forehead, the victim screeched, gurgled, and convulsed. With his other hand, the inquisitor held an open canopic jar near the victim’s face. The convulsing monk’s long thin tongue flailed rapid and aimless from its snapping jaw while its last desperate raspy screeches escaped its breathless throat. The bound reptoid’s body exhausted itself in seizure then calmed and stilled. Abby thought that the end, but then came one last dramatic violent convulsion. The monk’s body tightened and contorted, its head arched back, then, eyes still wide and burning blue, the creature froze.

The inquisitor spun the jar upside down above the victim’s twisted face.

The bound creature’s burning orbed eyes flared to a bright electric blue, then erupted into cerulean beams, rays that poured from the victim’s skull into the inquisitor’s open canopic jar.

The bright cerulean beams continued to shower upward for a full minute, then extinguished as abruptly as they had begun, leaving the bare hollow eye sockets of the tortured monk empty and lifeless.

Abby’s face wrinkled in horror. The suspicions were true. Like the Syn workers in the mines above, the Indici life force was separate from its body, and the reptoid inquisitors were using psionic power to remove that life force from the captured monks. The bound monk’s essence was literally sucked from its reptoid shell into the canopic jar .

With the life force extracted and contained, the inquisitor swung the glowing blue jar upright, placed a lid onto the opening, then set it onto a shelf behind him, alongside a string of other glowing blue canopic jars—jars containing the life forces of the other monks who’d already succumbed to the same fate.

The second inquisitor went immediately to work unfastening the straps binding the lifeless body to the rack. The two then lifted the limp, empty shell, carried it past Abby and Soren, over to the crater, then hoisted it up over the edge and into the burning lava cauldron.

Abby and Soren shared a glance, then rushed the two robed monks from behind. In concert they each grabbed the lower legs of an unsuspecting inquisitor, lifted, then flung the reptoids over the high rim of the crater and into to the molten soup.

The other Indici in the cave took note. The two jailers at the table sprung to their feet. They grabbed their electro tipped staves and swung them arcing to the left, right, and back, their reptoid tongues flicking in search of a scent, while the imprisoned Indici stopped their prayer chants and rose to their feet, tasting the air as well.

There was a tickle in Abby’s forehead as the jailers and prisoners alike attempted to use their psionics to ferret him out.

Leta, standing beside the cell, grabbed a metal cuff from the floor and tossed it toward the back of the cave, away from the crater. The Indici jailers spun their heads toward the thump of its landing, then cautiously moved toward the source of the sound.

Abby grinned at Leta, and with a nod, she engaged her wrist console to manipulate the lock on the cage.

CLANK —the door popped ajar .

The two jailers pivoted their attention toward the cage. They looked to each other, wobbled heads, flicked tongues, then moved toward it. They stopped midway across the floor and faced the cavern’s entrance. Abby’s chin-chip buzzed with the rhythm of the faint footfalls upon the stone steps.

The confused jailers continued to cock their heads to either side, their tongues rapidly wagging against the air.

The Lupo column bottomed the stairs and burst into the cavern.

The jailers rushed toward the hounds, but as the two passed the crater, Abby and Soren swung out their arms, clotheslined the Indici, and knocked them to the floor.

Before either fallen jailer could recover, the Lupo were upon them. There was hissing, then shrill screams, as the frenzied pack tore at them.

The screams ceased, replaced by the cracking of bone and the ripping of flesh and cartilage.

When the Lupo stood, all that remained of the two reptoids was an indiscernible pile of shredded meat.

Xander was the last to enter. With regal pace and head held high, the Lupo leader went directly to the holding pen and pulled the door fully open.

Unsure in step, the captured Indici monks exited the cell.

Two of the queue stopped before Xander. Abby recognized them. It was Sss’kyrone and one of his staff, Sss’kali. The other freed Indici approached the jailer’s remains. Raspy whispers filled the cavern.

“They pray for their brethren,” Sss’kyrone said to Xander. Then he asked, “How?”

“How?” repeated Xander.

“How did you do thisss?” added Sss’kali .

Abby nodded to the Umbra and, to answer the freed monks, the three shifted up spectrum, back into view, Leta next to Xander, Abby and Soren near the cauldron.

The two monks flicked their tongues to taste the scent of the newcomers, Sss’kyrone’s head rocking side-to-side in the odd reptoid way. “Ah,” he said.

“With the help of the children of the Alpha Plane,” added Sss’kali.

“Yes,” Abby said as he approached them. “And I implore you to return with us to the mainland, so that we may secure reinforcements through the bubble.”

“We are thankful,” said Sss’kyrone.

“But?” asked Abby.

“But,” added Sss’kali, “we have to get to the top of the mountain to ssstop Sss’kallion.”

~*~