Nightwalker

Chapter Twenty-Five

I sucked in a quick breath at the sight of where we were heading. I stayed on Ruddy who walked beside my Mistress' carriage as I stared up at the colossal building that was only growing bigger the closer we got to it.

The castles walls were made of black stone and deadly looking spikes piked put of the walls every now and then. The wall that was built around the castle was also made of black stone and had spikes along it, keeping anyone stupid enough from climbing it. At the top were gaps where soldiers should have been standing looking down and guarding the wall. But all that was there were large cauldron looking bowels, filled with what? I don't know.

I regretted immediately looking along the wall. Cages hung out from the wall and I could see from where I was that there was either half dead or already dead humans in those cages. Crows pecked and squawked at each other over these corpses as I watched them fighting over an eyeball that had fallen out of a what use to be a woman's head.

Death surrounded this black castle and the mana in the area whispered promises of insanity into my ears. I wouldn't allow a single drop of this dark mana enter me. The natural mana that was inside me cringed and pulled away from this darker mana that touched and caressed my skin keeping the hairs on my body on end along with goosebumps prickling.

The smell hit me next. Rot. Just plain rot and decay hit me like a slap in the face. I gagged and had to covered my mouth as we passed the cages.

I couldn't take my eyes off of those still alive in these black iron cages. They were drained. I could fee it. Any amount of mana inside them was slowly trickling out. Hollow eyes stared out at nothing. Blankness on pale sunken in faces. Their bodies nothing but bones and bulges from their intestines. Clothes, nothing but scraps, stained and bleached by excrement. I could see the slightest bulges of their veins under the skin, it seemed like there was nothing even going through them.

I was too busy looking at a man who was slumped at the bottom of his cage not even flinching when a crow started pecking the skin off of his fingers to realise how close I had gotten to another cage.

I let out a squeak when what felt like a bunch of sticks wrapped around my wrist. I froze as I came face to face with a woman who looked like she should have already been dead.

My throat constricted as I felt the last of this woman's mana seeped into me against my will. Something was different about this mana though. It felt more like a spell than pure mana being transferred to one person from another.

Suddenly my world went blank. For a second or an hour, I couldn't tell. But I was suddenly in a world of white. Light came from everywhere and nowhere, blinding me while making everything painfully bright.

I couldn't move. I couldn't see. I couldn't smell. I couldn't taste. My senses were dulled to almost not even working. I was terrified while also feeling a ball of curiosity fill me.

I perked up though as a whisper tickled my ears. The faintest of sounds in this world of white. I didn't catch it the first time but when it came again I was both confused and terrified.

"Yeri qoy mae atthirar. Villat, ha ki Akkelenak mae irge me."

(Your blood is life. Beware, for the Master is after it.)

It was a warning. A warning not from this near dead woman.

As fast as I entered the world of white I was back in my own and staring at the blank eyes of a dead woman.

The message was most definitely for me but I had an unmistakeable feeling that it wasn't exactly from this woman. Something had used her to get it to me.