TLDR: Anthro lioness goes into a castle, finds evil things, fights and falls unconscious. Bad thingies gonna happen next.
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Alanis has always hated injustice. Humans may have been murdering her kin for generations and will likely keep murdering them for generations to come, but rather than judging anyone by their species, she decided to treat members of every race as individuals. Everyone could either be a good person or a bad one, but no one deserved to be labelled as one or the other, solely based on to whom they were born. There weren’t many felines, elves, humans, lizards, dwarves, or pretty much anyone else for that matter, who’d see it the same way as she did. That didn’t dislodge her determination though.
She had been hunting in the Whispering Forest when she learned about a group of missing human nobles. They had wandered into a remote part of the woods, on that is known as the Devil’s Tongue; a name fitting for a lonely ruin, that often distorts winds into a macabre chant, that would break the morale of any adventurer. People always loved to call it a work of a draft, but the same people never dared to enter the crumbling bastion. Alanis could never be tagged as someone overly gullible, but she wasn’t stupid either. If the word was out that you should steer clear of one place or another, you probably should, much more so if it was in a secluded and nearly unreachable area. Still, she felt pity for the nobles and her conscience didn’t allow her to leave the matter be.
Three days have past, but she has finally reached her destination. Her journey here went surprisingly smooth, almost too smooth for the young feline’s taste, as smooth travels often meant rough destinations. She still had plenty of supplies remaining, her steel spear was sharp and intact, and her lamellar armour has never been in a better shape. All in all, she was ready for anything, and she felt determined to save the stupid humans.
In front of her, towering above the endless forest like a nail hammered through a palm of one’s hand, stood a giant black bastion. Even at a first glance, the place felt cold, evil and unwelcoming, it immediately reminded Alanis of her stay in a torture room deep inside the Hiensdorf castle. She shivered upon recalling that.
Perhaps a bit too late did it occur to her, that she had no idea how she was going to find a group of humans in something so immensely vast, as the fortress in front of her. As she was a lion, one of the feline subspecies that lived in the southern savannah, her night-sight was far better than that of elves or humans, but that still didn’t solve her need for a good map. In order to mitigate her lack of something so essential, she had pocketed some charcoal before she embarked on her rescue mission.
Alanis used a piece of charcoal and drew a black cross on a wall, right behind the entrance. She would mark her progress in a similar fashion up until she’d find those humans. It wasn’t a fool-proof strategy and Alanis knew that, but it was the best she could do. There wasn’t any main gate to be found, it must’ve been smashed into pieces decades ago, and one of the two gate towers was nothing more than a pile of rubble. The young lioness stashed her charcoal and started making her way deeper into darkness, with one of her hands instinctively raised in front of her, so as not to hit a pillar or a wall. Not even cats can see in complete, cave-like darkness.
Much too soon, she found herself incapable of seeing her own whiskers. She immediately stopped, wanting to turn around and trace her steps back to light, but just as paw touched the ground for the first time, the world spun around her and she’s lost her footing, instantly falling on the marble floor. Alanis panicked, tightening her grip on her spear and eyeing darkness around her. When nothing happened, she calmed down a little, only to be abruptly sent back into a state of panic. Out of nowhere a voice echoed throughout the room she was in, cold and uncaring like a blizzard, forcing those caught up in its reach to steel themselves against it or to die.
“Alanis the kind. Alanis the brave. Alanis the stupid. Many names, many stories, one end.”
Every word made her tremble. From the ground beneath her paws, to the ceiling far above her head, everything resonated as the stranger spoke.
“You knew not to come. You knew not to enter. You knew not to search. Yet you are here, Alanis with a fate unalterable. Why is that so?”
Seeing that no harm came to her so far, the lioness calmed herself once again, trying to make sense of what she was being told.
“WHY?!”
Her fur bristled and she immediately readied her weapon, but once again, nothing else happened. No one seemed to be attacking her, nothing made it towards her, for now at least.
“T-to save the humans!”
With all her willpower, she tried to sound as brave and determined as possible, but her voice betrayed her, trembling like a leaf tossed into the wind. That was coincidently painfully similar to how she really felt; so insignificant compared to the being hidden in the shadows. It reminded her of her encounter with Deoreoth, an enormous old dragon that lived in the Icy Waste to the North.
“Amusing. A feline on a path to save humans, she’s never met before. HA-HA.”
The creature’s laughter sounded like a box of nails being shaken. There was nothing familiar or friendly about it.
“So be it. I will grant you those humans, their weapons and even their horses.”
She felt a glimmer of hope again, perhaps this was a good idea, after all; perhaps her caring nature wasn’t a weakness, as she had feared when she first came to this place. Her hopes were all crushed when the creature spoke again.
“But you shan’t leave this place.”
Alanis chose not to understand.
“What do you mean?” her voice no longer trembled. She was still afraid, but a more pressing matter has flooded to the surface of her thoughts.
“I can’t leave with those humans?” the lioness started breathing faster, rubbernecking into the darkness around her, as she started catching glimpses of movement around her. Steps could be heard in shadows, steps and the sound of hooves clopping over the marble floor.
“ANSWER ME!”
Suddenly, the room grew much colder. Alanis tightened her grip around her spear and quickly untied the lace securing her short sword in its sheath.
The sound of naked steps on stone grew louder.
“I’ll leave without those humans, just stop this!” fear finally took hold of her brave young heart and she suddenly wanted nothing else but the get away from this accursed place; somewhere safe, somewhere warm, anywhere but here. No one answered her plea, no one even cared to deny it, she had to face the darkness alone.
A human or an elvish silhouette finally emerged from the shadows, materialising to her right and slowly making its way towards her. At first, she wanted to call out for the human to help her, but then she noticed that something was awfully wrong about him. Her heart sunk a little, the carcass, no one with a working eyesight could call it anything else, lacked its head and had an exposed bone without a hand for its arm.
She immediately lunged forward and impaled the horrific creature with her spear, tearing through its rotting flesh and brittle bones, until half of her weapon remained sticking out of the other side. Imagine the horror she felt when this didn’t even slow her assailant down. In the meantime, three more undead emerged from the shadows, slowly limping towards her with extended arms, or what remained of them, and exposed bones.
Alanis drew her sword and started cutting them to pieces. The time she’s spent travelling around the 27 provinces has taught her a lot; sadly for her, no one told her how to kill the dead.
She’s cut away arms and legs, shredded torsos and decapitated bodies, but that seemed to only slow them down. Unattached hands kept crawling towards her like fleshy spiders, legs were wriggling pools of puss and diseased blood on the ground, desperately trying to reach her and hurt her; it was a bloody mess the likes she’s never seen before. What was worse, more of those corpses started appearing from the blackness, allured by the sound of a struggle. At one point, Alanis would’ve even sworn to have seen an undead stallion, carelessly prancing around and loosing shreds of own flesh in the process.
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As she felt her sword getting duller and duller, she suddenly decided to make a run for it. It was a bad idea, she was aware of that, but it nevertheless seemed like the best thing to do, given the fact that there seemed to be no end to her enemies. Although they were dumb, slow and utterly incompetent at fighting, her energy was quickly depleting, and she started worrying that the constant straining of her muscles would eventually lead to cramps and that would surely be the end of her.
Alanis shoved the closest carcass, a bearded man with no eyes and an open chest, towards the other undead, buying herself time and immediately bolting in the direction she presumed to lead back to the forest.
Alas, she didn’t do more than a few steps before crashing headfirst into a stone pillar, falling down on her ass before losing consciousness.
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Thank you for reading the first part of my new short series! I hope that you enjoyed this! I am happy to be back. As always, lmk if you encounter any grammar mistakes. Have a good day and brace yourself for part two!
