Inkitt Link, for those interested.

Needless to say, things were interesting for quite a while after that. Jess was unfortunately the next to awaken, and to say she lectured me almost to death would be an understatement. It’d almost be like saying a hurricane was a shower. She cussed me. She berated me. I got slapped, and she shook her fist at me. Even the fact that Tiffany was now up and active did nothing to soothe her temper.

All I did was somehow merge Mongo’s mind into Tiffany’s body with hers, causing them to suffer from a split personality… What’s there to be angry about with such a thing? At least the corruption seemed to be leaving her, and she was going to live now! Living a little broken is better than dying with your soul tainted by darkness forevermore. Right?

Dino was the next to awake, and he treated me like some sort of disease-ridden leper. He wouldn’t really speak to me, and often wouldn’t even talk to me. Him and Skeet had both developed a simple method of needing to do things in a different room, whenever I entered where they were. Jess tried to treat Tiffany; Tiffany tried to treat Mongo’s body, and Mongo spoke up from time to time and griped about the whole situation.

If it wouldn’t have been for Crystal staying by my side, I would’ve been completely alone over the next few days. She sat with me, we held each other, and more or less we were ostracized by the others. At first, even she was a little distant with me, but she quickly got over whatever her doubts or hesitations were. We went to sleep that night and she was distant, stiff, and cold towards me. I tossed, turned, and had a terrible time trying to sleep, but when I finally woke the next morning she was snuggled up and nibbling on me from top to bottom.

To say her friendship and passion helped fill a hole that was forming in my heart, wouldn’t be a stretch at all. We made warm, passionate love, with her taking the lead for the first time, and when we finished all was right with the world once again. She snuggled and nuzzled back down with me and even though we didn’t talk much, her warm comforting presence helped give me strength to endure the other’s distant coldness.

For a total of three more days, we stayed trapped in the confines of our prison, surrounded by our jailers of the dead. Several times I thought of simply forcing my way out, to leaving this place and not looking back – others be damned no matter what – but I couldn’t. Crystal’s warm and comforting presence reminded me that there were other innocent and good people out there, people who I cared deeply and passionately about. I couldn’t take the chance on leaving and allowing the darkness that was growing in me to spread outside the barrier. No matter what, I was not going to become the bringer of darkness.

So, since we weren’t leaving, and since the others weren’t having anything to do with us, that left three whole days and nights for me and Crystal to spend alone. The first day we simply enjoyed in each other’s arms, and we must’ve made love at least a dozen times. At least, that’s how it felt to me. It was blissful in its own way, and was a means for us both to heal and recover. The second day, I sat and carved and shaped on the obsidian that was left over from where I’d melted and purified the tainted stone walls that had separated the rooms and Crystal had sliced her way through with Heartblade.

I created small carvings of rabbits, deer, squirrels, flowers, and trees. Things from the surface to help bring a little bit of light and warmth back into the cold darkness that was the underground tomb we were trapped within. I used my magic to color them, to add some scent to the flowers, to make the trees move and sway slightly, as if in a breeze. They became precious treasures to help Crystal and me remember the surface, which now seemed oh so far away.

On the third day, I decided that my magic was strong enough; that others be damned with their hateful glares and snarky attitudes! It was time for me to start the preliminary steps to getting out of this place eventually.

Telling Crystal my plan, I used my magic to harden the air between our little chamber and the one where Skeet and Mongo slept in. No sound would come from our room and bothers the others, who seemed lost in their own little worlds of blame and hatred. I’d saved Tiffany! With Mongo’s strength and spirit, the taint was fading from her more and more every day! I’d warned them that there may be consequences. That the outcome wasn’t going to be all gold and roses.

And yet, they all acted as if I was a demonic madman! We didn’t need their help for what I was going to do, and I didn’t need their interference or judgmental glares. Crystal and I were enough for this job.

With the wall of silence between us and the others, Crystal gripped Heartblade tight in her hands and forced open the door which lead out from our room and into the hallway. With a screech of stone scraping stone, she yanked the door wide; revealing an endless swarm of dead outside which immediately tried to rush in.

The skeletons that got in range of Heartblade’s aura crumbled and fell where they stood, but flesh-rotting zombies quickly tried to climb across the corpses to rip and tear at our soft warm life. As soon as the first ones crossed the threshold to our room, I released my anger, frustration, and worries upon them. Pulling in flows of pure, uncorrupted flows of fire energy from the deeper depths of the earth below, I blasted them with an inferno of heat and fire that instantly incinerated flesh and bone alike.

A small portion of my magic was used to wrap Crystal in a protective layer of natural warmth and comfort, to keep the heelish inferno from obliterating her as it was the dead, but that still gave me a lot of reserve strength to unleash. I’d had days to rest. Days of sitting and whittling, worrying and fretting. Days of being treated like I was a monster by those that should be my friends.

If it wasn’t for Crystal, the corruption probably would’ve completely taken over my soul, and I would’ve melted the others as I was erasing the dead now from existence. Corruption. Taint. Whatever the hell it was! Let’s see what it can do with there’s nothing but scorched ashes floating on the wind!

Taking step by deliberate step, I walked past Crystal and out into the hallway, surrounded by a raging inferno. Frost began to form on the walls to counter the intense heat I was generating once more, but the walls weren’t my target this time. With a roar of power, I stretched out my arms to either side and unleashed a hellish blaze of blue-white intensity down both sides of the corridor. Skeletons crumbled instantly. Zombies burned like a match in the midst of a forest fire, and swiftly crumbled and fell, burning and smoldering till there was nothing more left of them than scorched ash like the skeletons.

In moments, the hall was clear once again. My magical reserves were much lower than before, but I still wasn’t satisfied. I could sense ever more dead being drawn to fill the gap I’d created, and I walked down the hallway to the next intersection to greet them.

As I entered the next intersection, I obliterated utterly everything that moved up and down the hall. And then I did the same for the next intersection, and the one after that, and then the one after that. Still, I could feel numerous dead marching to fill in the hole I’d created, and I finally backed off.

My reserves of energy were getting lower than I was comfortable with, and the number of dead seemed almost limitless. I felt like I was at the bottom of a pond, striking a match underwater and trying to evaporate the water all around me. Surely there were less dead than before – probably hundreds less – but what were a few hundred when it felt like there were millions more to replace them?

Frustrated, but feeling much better in some ways, I retreated back to the hall where we’d been staying with the others. Much to my surprise, the door across from ours, on the opposite side of the wall, was pushed wide open. Fearing some new, undetected threat, I eased myself into it, expecting to have to blast whatever was there – and the room was empty.

A simply square stone storeroom, much like the ones we were staying in on our side of the hallway was all I saw, with one obvious exception – the wall between this room and the one that was adjacent to it had several large square holes sliced and carved into it. Obviously the work of Crystal and Heartblade, the holes weren’t large enough for anyone to travel through, being no more than a forearm’s length and height, but I couldn’t divine the reason for them at all. The stone was cut, pulled out of the wall, and removed completely, and there was perhaps a half dozen to a dozen gaps where the wall had been sliced to put such “windows” in it into the other room.

While I stood, trying to figure out what had possessed her to carve windows between rooms no one was staying in, Crystal came back into the room, sword hung at her hip and our lightstone in her hand. “My Lord!” She sounded shocked to see me, and half jumped back in surprise. “Are you finished out in the halls for now?”

“I am, and the dead are still coming. We should get back to the room and shut ourselves in once again,” I told her, as I moved around her and back across the hall an into our own room. A few moments later, she came in behind me and shut our door to keep the dead away. Strangely enough, several blackened stone blocks were stacked neatly in the corner of the room.

Raising an eyebrow questioningly at her, Crystal just shrugged and laughed. “Some more stone for My Lord to carve or shape, once you melt and purify it. I like watching you work, and we were running out of free stone that you could use.”

“Well thank you,” I told her, honestly touched that she’d think about me while keeping watch and making certain the dead stayed away while I flexed my magic a bit. Laughing, I couldn’t help but go over, hug and squeeze her tightly for several moments. As I was finally letting go, she surprised me by leaning in and kissing me passionately.

“It’s nice not to have the dead scratching at the door; even if it is just for a few moments,” Crystal said, smiling brightly once she’d unlocked her lips and tongue from mine. “You have my thanks, for even a few minutes’ peace, My Lord.”

“It won’t last,” I warned her. “Already the dead are back in the tunnel. Their scratching will start back up soon. I was hoping that a few days repeating the process would help thin out the herd somewhat, so we won’t have such a difficult time when we actually try to leave later, but now I wonder about that. It seems as if their numbers are limitless. Even if my brain tells me that’s not possible, that’s still how it seems.

“There’s a darkness here that defies logic, and I fear my work isn’t harming it at all. When we leave, we’re going to have to fight our way out,” I warned her, grimly. “I honestly don’t think I’m going to be able to clear the endless dead with my magic alone.”

“And we still can’t leave,” Crystal reminded me. “We don’t know what’s happened to the other two yet.”

“I’m assuming they’re dead at this point,” I told her, sadly. “It’s only our magic that’s allowing us to survive down here without a steady source of food and water. Mongo and the others would already be dead, if we wouldn’t have found them when we did.”

“And yet, they seem to have forgotten that already,” Crystal muttered angrily. “I really don’t like the way they seem to be blaming you for everything, My Lord. Is there any chance that the taint is affecting their opinions? Their minds?”

“I don’t think so,” I told her, shrugging slightly. “I think it’s mainly just nerves. We’re surrounded by the dead. The scratching won’t stop at the doors. Mongo is still in a coma. Tiffany is alive but somehow merged with Mongo. There’s no sunlight. No wind. No star and no moon. Everyone’s on edge, and they saw me perform a horrendous act of magic that’ll give them nightmares and wake them in the middle of the night for years to come.

“There’s no taint affecting them, I don’t think,” I told her, quietly, “but that doesn’t mean their distance and judgment doesn’t hurt. I understand it – they need to be able to put blame on something, just to make themselves feel better – but I really don’t like being the one at the brunt end of their emotions.”

Stripping out of her chain robe, and undressing completely once more, Crystal just laughed lightly. “You still have me, My Lord. I’ll admit, what I saw bothered me at first, but then I decided it wasn’t important. It’s thanks to you that I’ve got a good home now, that my family is out of their debt and bonds and are walking free once more.

“I promised I’d be yours, and then at the first difficult hurdle, I almost forgot about that promise.” Stretching lightly, she slowly sauntered over, wrapped her arms around my neck, and pressed her naked body up tight against me. “You’ve treated me so well, been so kind, I almost forgot my own initial resolution – to follow and serve My Lord all my life, no matter what. I’m a slave, who’s given so much kindness and freedom, that I forgot who and what I was for a while.

“And, when I remembered that, I realized that it didn’t matter whether you did horrendous things to others or not. You had given me nothing but warmth, kindness, and even love – when I was nothing more than a slave which someone else bought for you, without even asking your opinion. Even if the world turns its back on you, My Lord, I won’t. You have my word on that.” Leaning up tight, she kissed me long and passionately, while I wrapped my arms around her bare back and pulled her close.

“You know, I don’t really see you as a slave,” I told her breathlessly, once she’d finally pulled back from her extended kiss. “You’re my friend, and someone I care about deeply, and am coming to care for more and more every day. Your freedom is yours, anytime you want it, and the laws can be damned if they don’t agree or allow it.”

“And that,” Crystal said, nuzzling up and resting her head on my shoulder, “is why I don’t want or need it. My freedom’s yours My Lord. Keep it, and keep me. I’m not going anywhere.”

My first attempt at clearing the dead and lessening the numbers around us had been a complete failure, but for some odd reason, I didn’t mind. In fact, I didn’t mind the others being moody and ignoring us still.

As strange as it is to say it, I was quiet content and peaceful at the moment where I was. Trapped in darkness, surrounded by the dead, with taint and corruption all about – I’d found a place of utter warmth and acceptance in Crystal’s embrace.