Chapter 17

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_-_ Brief note from author on odd use of punctuation marks

_-_ "Dialogue"

_-_ ~Thoughts~

_-_ "~Dialogue through thoughts (telepathy)~"

_-_ End of note

_-_-_-_

Jane returned to her humanoid form once more. She gazed gleefully at the ceiling as though looking to the planes above where the marquis resided, basking in her victory. She looked back at Sampson's corpse ready to absorb it only to find a dummy in its place.

"2 and a half years..." Jane's head snapped around. "2 and a half years of friendship, just to throw me away to some demon lord." To Jane's complete shock, in front of her stood Sampson, leaning calmly against a wall, holding his bow with a glowing arrow primed but aimed at the ground.

Her gaze hopped back down to the place where Sampson's corpse was supposed to be only to find the same dummy composed of pillows, neatly stitched together to resemble a humanoid.

"Don't worry, I'm not upset. The arrow is just here for my safety. But anyway, I am impressed. Did you choose me as your sacrifice the day you met me or later on?" No response. Jane just looked on in shock.

"Ah, doesn't matter. Like I said, I am very impressed. You're like a... a hyper-intelligent... parasite. I've studied this sort of thing you see. A scholar of all things subtle I am, and you... are subtle. Just... not subtle enough." Jane continued looking on, motionless, like a deer caught in the headlights.

"Come on. Nothing? No 'impossible!'?" No response. "Well, then allow me to monologue a little. I'm not usually the type to explain my tactics, plans, abilities or arsenal of any kind to the enemy, but I don't think this information will aid you in the slightest. Not after today anyway. There is this specie of insect called the ebalusp. They are venomous. Not the type of venom that causes pain or death, but a rather unique type of venom that causes hallucinations and alters the frame through which one perceives time. I breed them myself and harvest their venom, experiment with it, modify it. You won't find them anywhere as I keep them all to myself. This version of the venom enables the infected to experience an hour within a second, a month within a week, perhaps even a year within a month. Also, I am immune to their venom. You aren't. Suspecting that you were some sort of vampiric creature, I injected the venom into myself just for you. If I remember correctly, you drank my blood about... 5 days after meeting me, yes? And that was 2 months ago. So how long has it been for you? Two... years? Two and a half?"

Jane almost threw up. Never in her life had she experienced this feeling, like her heart was in her throat.

"I watched and... er... 'guided', lets say, your hallucinated life from where I stand now. It was quite interesting. Fascinating how the version of me that existed in your mind had an entirely different personality. Understandable. You've only known me for a day." Her whole body trembled as she was caught between wanting to flee and not being able to move. "Relax. I said I wasn't upset with you."

Finally, Jane's legs obeyed her, launching her toward the exit. "Oh, makers..."

The door, unlike her legs, refused to obey her and remained shut. When she tried to squeeze through the cracks, a barrier-like sorceric construct repelled her attempt, leaving her trapped in the room. She dropped to her knees and tore open her own stomach. Out of her stomach poured dozens upon dozens of what appeared to be the reanimated corpses of young adult human males and females.

"~HE'S TRYING TO KILL ME!! DON'T LET ME KILL ME!!~"

"JANE!" "LEAVE IT TO ME, MY LOVE!" "I WILL PROTECT YOU, MY QUEEN!" "I LOVE YOU, JAAANE!" "STAY AWAY FROM JAAANE!!" "I WON'T LET YOU TOUCH HER!!" "SHE IS EVERYTHING TO ME!! LEAVE HER ALONE!!"

They all charged toward Sampson. Sampson, still calmly leaning against the wall, sighed and gently released the arrow he had primed and aimed at the ground. Upon hitting the ground, the arrow began splitting endlessly into other arrows, easily piercing the skulls of all the reanimated corpses sprinting toward him. As the corpses fell by the dozens, more corpses emerged from Jane.

~Now, this I've never seen before. Usually, souls fly away freely afterwards, but these souls...~ Upon being struck down, the souls of the corpses rose and flew straight back to Jane, only to re-emerge as the exact same corpses.

"I WILL NEVER LET YOU HURT JANE!!" "JANE LOVES ME!" "JANE UNDERSTANDS ME LIKE NO ONE ELSE!! YOU ARE A MONSTER TO TAKE HER AWAY FROM ME!!"

The corpses that began emerging from Jane's stomach appeared to be both civilians and soldiers from many different eras, some of which stretched back multiple thousands of years. None of these corpses, however, had any resistance to the sorcery of the modern day and thus fell after being pierced through the skull by one of the countless glowing, searing arrows ricocheting off the walls, ground and ceiling.

The more that corpses filled the room, the bigger the room seemed to get, somehow accommodating them all. Sampson, still leaning calmly against the wall, very slowly fired one arrow after the other. ~How in the maker's name did she manage to fit all this in her stomach? She's tiny...! I've surely killed halfway to a thousand of these puppets by now...~

A soul from one of the slain corpses flew to Jane to plead with her. "Jane, please! I don't want this monster to hurt or kill you! Please! Run away with me! I will make sure that he doesn't reach you! Please, it's the only way we can be together!" Jane took the soul in her hands, looking it lovingly in the eyes.

"~We can't, Jem. There is no escape from him, nowhere we can hide. We have to fight if we want to live, if we want to be together. Will you fight for me?~" Those last words ignited an extremely hot flame within that soul.

"As long as I am still breathing, as long as I still live, I will fight for you."

The soul turned to face Sampson and once more manifested its physical form. This time, however, it was heavily armed with physical armour, protective spells, a large shield and a one-handed sword. "STAY AWAY FROM JAAAAAAANE!!"

The corpse charged toward Sampson who, still having no intention of expending any energy, reached into his hip mounted quiver and took out an arrow shaped like a beetle. He launched the arrow downward and, upon bouncing off the ground, the arrow turned into what appeared to be a large, armoured beetle which charged toward the rapidly approaching soldier corpse.

Just as they were about to clash, Jane felt a hand touch her cheek. She turned only to find Sampson stood right next to her with an unimpressed and somewhat tired expression on his face. All of her reanimated corpses had been slain. "Can we talk?"

"NNAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAA!! STAY AWAAAAYYY!"

Sampson sighed as Jane scurried away past the mountains of corpses that had amassed. As she fled, she opened her stomach once more to release more corpses. The cycle merely repeated itself, with Sampson essentially chasing Jane around the castle's interior, trying to strike up a conversation and being completely denied such at every turn.

Among the corpses that began emerging from Jane's stomach were titan-born warriors, hybrids of human and giant heritage. "JAAAAAANE! I WILL PROTECT YOU!!" "I SHALL NOT LET HIM TOUCH YOU, MY QUEEN!!" "FOR THE QUEEN!!" "FOR JAAAAAAAAANE!!"

This time, the arrows only barely pierced the skin, mostly bouncing off their skulls and armour. Rather than chasing after Sampson, however, the titan-borns began attacking each other until there was only one left standing which caught an arrow in each eye before falling.

By the time the carnage had come to an end, the entire castle was filled with 3497 corpses with a lot of them spilling outside. Sampson was still leaning against the wall, one hand in his pocket.

"STAY AWAAAAYYYY FROM MEEE!!" Jane began crawling away as Sampson slowly walked towards her.

As Jane stumbled away, she was stopped by Sampson suddenly appearing in front of her. "NAAAAAA!! LEAVE ME ALOOOONE!!" As she turned around to flee, her path was again blocked by Sampson. Everywhere she turned, Sampson was there blocking her path to salvation. She quickly found herself surrounded completely by dozens of Sampsons all harbouring an expression of disappointment and disinterest.

Jane, having reached the limit of her ability to tolerate this foreign emotion, fell to her knees and threw up. She began crying and screaming frantically, holding her head as she had nowhere to run.

"NAAAAAAAAA! PLEASE, DON'T! I'M SORRY! I'M SORRY! STOOOP! STOOOP! SAAAMMY! SAAMMYYY, I'M SOORRYYYY! SAAAMMYYY! SAAMMYYYYYYYY! PLEASE, DON'T HURT MEEEEE! NAAAAAAA!" She threw up again. As Sampson placed himself right in front of her, Jane frantically bowed her head into her own vomit, begging for her life. "Please! Please, don't hurt me, Sammy! I'm sorry, Sammy! I'm so sorry! Pleaaaase?! Please, Sammy!" She crawled sheepishly through her own vomit toward him and placed her head on his foot as she wheeped.

~Odd. I thought she would have been a bit more... confident? Something like an 'ah, so you knew all along, eh?' Followed by a bit of a chuckle or something, then maybe a 'but I knew that you knew all along, all along,' but this? Well, this is... fascinating... in its own way.~ "In your hallucinogenic reality, you killed me, did you not?"

Jane's eyes widened through her tears. "I'm so sorry, Sammy...! I'm so sorry...!"

"Sure, sure. But doesn't this mean that I now have the right to kill you?" Jane almost fainted from hearing the question and would have thrown her guts up if she had anything left to throw up. The more afraid she grew, the more her physical form unravelled, until she no longer resembled any creature Sampson had ever seen. She had begun to leak strange, pungent, yellowish fluids, forcing Sampson to immediately shield his nose and mouth from the smell.

She hugged his leg with her trembling, amorphous arms.

"Please, Sammy! I'll do anything you ask of me! Please, don't hurt me! Please, don't kill me!"

"I really do mean it when I say that I'm impressed. You have no combat ability to speak of, yet you've managed to single-handedly enslave and kill almost 3 and a half thousand people over the span of thousands of years in the exact same manner that you attempted to with me. You might be a better hunter than me."

"I'm sorry... please, Sammy...!"

"I haven't seen many like you. I don't mean whatever specie you belong to, by the way. I still don't know what exactly you are. I mean hollow people. No conscience, no heart, no soul, no spine. Just ambition and cowardice. I've studied these types of people, you see. They fascinate me to no end. You fascinate me to no end. You're like a... a spider... crawling along a very tight web. It seems this is the first time in your seemingly endless life that the web has finally been cut. Look how you've fallen."

"Please, forgive me, Sammy...! I'll do anything you ask of me..."

"Anything, aye?" Sampson looked down at the rather unsightly puddle of bile, black flesh and strange fluids that was wrapped sloppily around his leg. "I imagine this is your first time trifling with a disciple of Alari." No response. "Well, I'm sure you won't try it again."

Jane, trembling arms still wrapped around Sampson's leg, felt a hand gently pat her head. "There, there. You'll be alright."

"I'll do anything, I swear...!"

"Promise?" Jane's eyes widened while Sampson burst into laughter at his own mention of promises.

"I promise! Please, let me live!"

"I'm sure we can work something out."