Spiral of events: Carnage

Jade talked to Vincent as they ran down the hallway. "Master, this place, why did she choose it?"

He sighed. "She did it subconsciously."

"But didn't the Nard portion and the Sanctuary switch places?" asked Jade.

Vincent nodded, "Right after the wedding, Mininna was so upset that the chapel we got married in was with the Nards."

"How can it switch, Master?" she asked.

"Every few hundred years, the Abyss of Former Casalyians trades the original sanctuary for the one with the Nards, to clean the outside of it."

"That seems a little much," Jade replied, noticing the hallway they were going down morphed before them.

"Not for back then though. Gale Sparrow was a genius, ahead of his time in design and architecture."

Vincent continued down the morphing hallway, opening every door he could find. Not wanting to waste any time, he avoided going into rooms where he could sense monsters lying in wait for them. They held nothing of interest to him, only delay.

The hall abruptly ended. It seemed they had hit a dead end, literally. Vincent stopped moving and frowned. But the dead end shifted and elevator doors opened. With some apprehension, they stepped inside; the doors automatically closed. The elevator started, but quickly stopped two levels down. After the abrupt stop, the smell of rotted flesh circled into the small elevator. Vincent quickly covered his mouth and nose.

Jade looked at him. "Master, do you smell them?"

Vincent readied his whip, dropping his hand from his nose and mouth as the doors slowly began to open. He quietly replied, "Skeletal zombies." The elevator doors dinged, and Vincent's whip went out in a flash, hitting a skeletal zombie in the head. The zombie groaned and its head snapped back.

Vincent quickly stepped from the elevator into a large oval room. He moved to the left side of the door wanting to scan his options. But the skeletal zombies were already on the move toward him. He lifted his whip, wrapping it around another zombie, then slashed a group of them. The ones that were hit dropped their jaws and groaned, trying to recover. Their hollow eyes glowed red and appeared to follow Vincent's movements.

Vincent retracted his whip. Pieces of rotted flesh clung to it. While most of the zombies were entirely bone, some of them still had rotted flesh hanging loosely about them. Sickened, Vincent vigorously shook his whip, trying desperately to clear the chains.

He quickly glanced up, looking around the room. It was filled with them. Vincent took a step back, raising his whip above his head. He shuttered as pieces of rotted flesh dropped down on him. In a circling motion, he began to move his whip around the room. The whip went around the wall and pushed the skeletal zombies into a tight circle. Then he pulled them together. He knew the whip would not break.

The skeletal zombies were forced into a tight ring. Groans and croaks implied their pain. Vincent pulled them closer until he heard cracking sounds. He then released them. They all fell to the floor. But some of them gradually began to get back up.

Jade threw a concerned look to Vincent. "There are a lot of them, Master. What do you suggest I do?"

"Nothing," Vincent responded tersely. He readied his whip again, sending it out, but one of the skeletal zombies grabbed it.

The zombie spoke through its teeth. "We long to feel, to taste, to remember what live flesh on our bones feels like, so please die. Let us devour your body, your soul, so we can have what we long for."

Vincent yanked hard on his whip, jerking it from the skeletal zombie's hand. "No matter how many of us you devour—if you do gain human skin, human muscle, human heart—the others will eat you. If you do manage to survive, you will become a skeletal being again, or you will want flesh every day. Within a year you will again be what you are trying to escape from," Vincent stated bluntly.

Jade stared at her master. "Shouldn't you be fighting and not talking? Creed's very existence hangs in the balance, not to mention your king’s, and you feel the need to chastise a zombie."

The same skeletal zombie continued rambling. "You do not understand. You have flesh, so you would not know what it is like to feel empty on the inside. But how can I feel empty when there is nothing there, just space?" The skeletal zombie slowly ran its fingers along its rib cage and continued his lesson. “Some of us are lucky enough to have some flesh, others don't. Some eat their flesh out of hunger.”

Vincent stared at the skeletal zombie and decided he was done with this zombie’s speech. "If you get in my way, you will die."

"We are already dead," it responded in a gurgled voice. "So that is an empty threat."

Vincent sighed, his impatience reaching the maximum level. "That is not a threat!" His voice reverberated. "I suggest that if you want to keep on living, you move out of my way." Vincent's body began to illuminate with the dark blue and black flames from the orb. The fire started to wrap around him to create a shield. The skeletal zombies stepped back, not knowing what to expect. They watched him with their red eyes glowing more intensive as the blue and black flames started to swirl.

"I was going to let you live, but it seems you will not let me pass." He glanced around the cramped oval room and noticed a door on the other side. With a tilt of his head, he motioned Jade in that direction. Vincent grabbed the nearest skeletal zombie and crushed its head in his hands, turning it to dust. The body of the zombie fell to the floor. The other skeletal zombies moved forward. Vincent grabbed two more and slammed their heads together, then into the golden floor. Now he knew how to take them out—explode their heads.

But this one-by-one was taking too long for his liking, Vincent thought. He needed to switch tactics. He carefully dodged the skeletal zombies, as they tried to land their blows on him. Suddenly, Vincent jumped into the air and back-flipped, landing in the middle of the horde. The fast thinker quickly set up a blast, then promptly bounced away toward the door.

A vibrant white light with a black center appeared and expanded to fill the room, covering most of the skeletal zombies. It blew, causing the room to shake and a loud boom to reverberate throughout. The blast tore skeletal zombies to bits, disintegrating them and leaving a decently-sized crater in the middle of the room.

Vincent quickly stepped over skeletal ashes in front of the door and almost made a clean escape with Jade. One zombie, lucky to survive but on the floor, reached out his hand and grabbed Vincent's foot. "Tell me," its voice faltered between high and low treble, "What is it like to live?"

It depends on the situation and where you live, Vincent thought, as he deliberately shook away the grasp and exited the door.

Jade lingered behind and sighed, "Maybe my master pitied you, or maybe you managed to eat away at his conscience," Jade responded philosophically, momentarily staring into space. Then she left, too, following her master down a very narrow hallway that led up to the two levels they had passed in the elevator. They needed to check those floors, too.

As soon as Vincent started down the hallway of the first unchecked floor, he spotted Sue. She was swiftly running toward him from the opposite end, virtually appearing out of the dark. Surprised, she tried to come to a screeching halt, but almost smashed into him.

Sue blushed, but Vincent turned serious as he pointed behind her where a morphing hallway with a golden door had just appeared. "That is the door to the Sanctuary. Prepare yourself!"

Turning around, Sue nodded in silence. She and Vincent moved toward the door. When they got near, it opened with a loud screech and they stepped through.