Legends of Amacia Srandi: Last Bastion of the Caverias

Within moments, Hannibal and the team stood just outside of the entrance at the edge of where the bulkhead door once stood. He had stopped them before they went into what they now could see was a substantial alcove fifty feet deep while matching the dimensions of the archway. Most of the alcove entrance lay shrouded in deep shadow with the outline of the actual doors to the keep barely visible. The stench of ancient moldering death filled the air of the alcove but was now slowly dissipating with the bulkhead door open.

“What’s the hold up?” Harry asked, grimacing slightly at the stench. “You have that weird look again saying something’s off.”

“You’re right,” Hannibal replied sternly, “Something does feels off here, so off it’s making me feel uneasy. We need to tread very carefully for something dark lurks hidden in the shadows of this place. I can sense it.”

“Then maybe you should shine a light in that darkness,” Selina suggested. “That scepter does happen to be one powerful flashlight you know.”

“Right as always, princess,” Hannibal crowed, “Let’s shine a bit of light on this darkness and see what there is to see.” He smacked the pummel end of the scepter against the stone floor beneath their feet and the crystal spearhead of the scepter lit up brightly, driving away every shadow in the entranceway. Hannibal’s face faltered slightly before turning very grim at what the scepter’s light revealed. Soft swears of horror erupted from Ned, Thomas, and Cracko while Tau, Assad and Samantha looked on with sour foreboding expressions. Leila covered her mouth as a gasp of horror involuntarily escaped her lips at the ancient carnage lying before them. Josephine sighed grimly, shaking her head sadly while Nemesis remained silent, an icy glare on his bear face as he witnessed the charnel ruin before them.

Hannibal stared in grim disbelief at the grim carnage before him; hearing the gasps and swears of horror from his team. However, he ignored their commentary as the mass grave in front of him had his entire attention, for it felt hideously familiar to such a point it caused a scowl of grim rage to creep slowly across his face. He focused with growing rage at the skeletal remains of at least fifty armed and armored individuals with some of the bones being so disarticulated no positive identification could be made. Of those skeletal remains Hannibal could make out, he saw at least twenty humans, some of them nearly as large as Enoch. Another fifteen were alien in origin with a distinctly humanoid reptilian cast to them boasting large elongated skulls that seemed a reptilian/human hybrid along with long fangs, teeth, and six-fingered clawed hands. These creatures still had their broken and corroded weapons clinched in their skeletal fists and were every bit as large as the human remains.

Then Hannibal eyed yet another ten of the skeletal remains were truly horrendous alien abominations that completely abandoned the human form. Most were bipedal, but had hideous grotesque misshapen elongated skulls with six eye sockets, long fangs, tusks, and teeth like a T-rex. Multiple bony horns sprouted from the sides and tops of the skulls that were attached to a rough approximation of a giant veloci-raptor’s skeletal structure. However, these creatures had four long massive arms with the top pair of arms ending in scythe-like bony blades six feet long. The lower set of arms ended in long large seven-fingered hands with fingers a foot long ending in six-inch curved claws and two opposable thumbs. Along the forearms of these particular appendages, curved bony spurs two-feet in length terminating in needlelike points sprouted from the central bones of the forearms. Attached to the backs of these monsters was the skeletal framework for large bat-like wings with a wingspan of twenty-five feet. Running down the spinal column of the creatures were numerous sharp spines two feet long that resembled the bones of a fin. Finally, at the end of their tails, the creatures boasted a bony triple barb similar to a draken’s tail. Yet in spite of these creature’s natural skeletal armaments, they too wore black armor and clenched corroded medieval-looking demoniac weapons that appeared to have been damaged by a very potent acid. Several of these fiendish skeletons were of gigantic stature, some as large as twenty feet in length dwarfing the largest of the human and reptilian remains.

Finally, amongst the chaotic disarray of the ancient dead, Hannibal saw five human skeletons lying within titan mechanized armor suits every bit as large as the largest fiend skeletons. These suits must have been twenty-five feet in height when operational, but now they were piles of demolished junk with their arms and legs ripped completely off and the torsos split open in various manner. This revealed these mechanized armor suits had elaborate cockpits where human operators lay dismembered, still strapped into the machine. Three of the five pilots had their skulls missing along with significant portions of their torsos. The other two were literally ripped apart as if they had exploded. The stains of their blood and viscera splattered the wrecked cockpits of every mechanized titan. When Hannibal saw this, his blood ran cold and understood why he felt uneasy. For just a moment, he heard and then saw in his mind’s eye the battle that took place there. The savagery of the demoniac hordes of the original Emperor was beyond even what he saw in the war between the basilisks and Spiders during his nightmare of the Isle of the Dead. He shook his head violently, shaking off the vision with an ominous growl.

Moving beyond the ancient dead before him, Hannibal scanned the rest of the alcove with more than casual interest. The walls of the alcove lay crusted with the petrified flesh and viscera where it wasn’t blackened, pitted, and charred by close-quarters plasma fire. Eventually, Hannibal’s eye came to the doors, which lay blasted completely off their hinges on the floor, leaving a cavernous dark corridor beyond them. Skeletal remains of more bodies almost completely covered the doors, still lying where they fell in battle. With a grim sigh, he grieved at the loss and bubbled with growing fury against the Dark Powers for their desecration and annihilation of all life protected by Srandi.

Selina felt his horror, angst, and rising rage as she put her arm around him for emotional support. Whispering in his ear, she purred almost inaudibly, “Steady, my prince; steady. Keep your rage in check. It’s not needed here. The Lord will show the truth of this atrocity and make it right, so calm your mind and heart. We need you rational right now.”

“Right,” Hannibal whispered to Selina, his rage calming down to a slow boil, “Thank you for the help. I appreciate it.”

Selina nodded knowingly with a smile, purring, “You’re welcome. Now, what do you say we get to work?”

A grim sober look returned to Hannibal face as his resolve returned while his rage subsided further to a simmer. “Indeed,” he replied, now searching the scene for the best way to proceed.

While Selina helped Hannibal get a grip on what he saw, Enoch stared in complete horrified disbelief, finally whispering, “What in the name of the Almighty Ancient of Days happened here, and what the heck are those things? They look like demons to me.”

“That’s because they ARE demons, Enoch,” Hannibal growled grimly with a dark look in his eyes, “It’s obvious with what I see here is the Black Prince used Bolthor to open a hell gate to bring his demoniac army physically into our reality to destroy this place. I never thought it could be done but these bones cannot be denied. Bolthor did just that. The biggest ones here are Baal’s hell-fiend berserker princes who command divisions of lower hell-fiend berserkers, whose bones I also see amongst the fallen here. I saw them only one time when I was a dark wizard when I foolishly looked into the Abyss itself. Baal’s hell-fiend berserkers are one of his most dangerous hell legions. They are a force of primal destruction that glory in the chaos of utter carnage of unrestrained bloodshed no matter who it is. They live for the blood and skulls of slaughter, period. It’s as if they worship Baal with their brazen savagery and insane bloodlust. Baal only unleashes the hell-fiend berserkers when utter annihilation is the goal, which was the obvious objective here. How Bolthor and the Black Prince managed to get Baal to unleash his deadliest legion is a very grave discovery since it means the Emperor can call forth his demon minions and allies into our reality at will. This will complicate things for us tremendously.”

“But why would the old Emperor do that?” Samantha asked with fearful puzzlement. “With everything we’ve heard he had access to, why would he call forth a demon army of that magnitude from the Abyss itself to sack this fortress. Surely, his other forces could have done it without resorting to something so drastic. I don’t understand.”

“Of course you don’t, Sam,” Hannibal stated, turning to face her and the team. “No sane mind can comprehend such abysmal evil. All you need to understand is that Bolthor did it and these remains lying in front of us proves it. If Bolthor could do this, then I do not doubt Zaros is capable of doing the same to take us out.”

“But why do it like this?” Thomas asked bluntly, still reeling from Hannibal’s identification of the largest of the skeletal abominations lying in the alcove entrance. “It seems like severe overkill to me.”

“That’s exactly what it is,” Ana spat with intense hate and horrified amazement, “but this is on a level I’ve never seen before. This wasn’t a sacking of Srandi, but an annihilation and obliteration of this place. If these strange demon skeletons are what Hannibal say they are, then the original Emperor called them in as executioners in my opinion. This was meant to be a message to anyone who managed to find this place...a grim message of despotic hate and utter destruction warning to all finding it to not resist the Emperor or this is what would happen.”

“I must agree,” Josephine said softly, shaken by what she saw. “This is what Bolthor resorted to at the end of the war. His wrath drove him completely insane to the point he swore to wipe out all humanity for their rebellion to his ascension. I remember when he left the Black Fortress for his last battle with Thoth he came here not just to kill Thoth and the rest of the Caverias line, but also to slaughter everything in this fortress as a sacrifice for his ascension as a dark god. He truly believed that by annihilating all life here and offering their flesh, blood, and souls to the Dark Gods, Surtur and the Dark Gods would elevate him to infernal godhood. It never occurred to him that Surtur and the Dark Gods were just using him and never intended to make him one of them.”

Josephine’s grief became evident on her face when she paused. “Bolthor came here to end Thoth,” she said sorrowfully after composing herself, “but neither of them ever left this fortress, nor did those he brought to purge this place of all life and light. The Kragonar broke and ended everything. The Calamity’s first act was a worldwide EMP burst that disabled every piece of high technology, particularly communications, rendering them completely inoperative. Only those devices under very heavy shielding survived. Fortunately, I was buried in the core of the Black Fortress when this happened, so it didn’t seriously affect me. However, it did take out my long-range communications array temporarily, so I was cut off from recording Bolthor’s last fight with Thoth. I never saw how it ended, but figured it out when the commander of the Rakshasar assumed the mantle of Emperor immediately after the Kragonar. Somewhere in this fortress are the remains of Bolthor, and I suspect Thoth too. I dread what we may find in this place, but I have to know.”

Tau placed a comforting hand on Josephine’s shoulder, saying sympathetically, “That’s why we’re here. From what you said about your husband’s insane hatred for Thoth, I suspect the unease Beowulf is sensing about this place may be the echoes of the last fight here between your husband and Thoth. The inherent infernal hate your husband had for Thoth when he came here must have become embedded in the structure itself.”

“That’s a distinct possibility,” Assad agreed, “but I sense something more going on here. Have any of you noticed the dead that lie in yon entrance? There’s something not right about them. Some of those bones seem alien, even demoniac in nature. That would indicate the original Emperor somehow opened the infernal gates and summoned actual demons into our physical realm to fight for him as Beowulf suggested. If that’s the case, then we must proceed with great caution. Some of these demons may have survived all these eons sealed away in here just as the remnants of the Old Ones haunted Poseidia. We must tread very carefully when we enter this charnel house so as to not be caught unawares. Were you aware that your husband had summoned a legion of the worst demons of the Abyss to assist in the purge of this place, Miss Josephine?”

Josephine sighed deeply, saying, “Yes, but I was unable to do anything about it because of what he and that malignant Surtur did to me. All I could do is watch and record until the Kragonar stopped the madness and sent the hell legions back into the Abyss. It makes my blood run cold every time I think of the atrocity he committed to bring those monsters into our reality to fight on the front line.”

“What did he do,” Hannibal asked darkly with a scowl on his face. “How many did he offer to Baal to get him to unleash his Dark Berserker Legions to aid him?”

A tear dripped from Josephine’s organic eye as she whispered grimly, “He personally slaughtered fifty thousand prisoners within sight of this place to seal his unholy pact with that demon to open the infernal gate there. He purposely positioned them in them in the outline of the great Dark Seal of the Abyss and slaughtered them in an instant with his dark elemental power.” She stopped for a second, choking with horror as the memory of the atrocity flooded from her memory banks into her conscious mind. Not able to withstand the evil of the memory, Josephine covered her mouth with her hand and sobbed hysterically, tears flowing freely from her organic eye. “I can’t...describe it!” she wailed, breaking emotionally. “It’s worse than watching Bolthor eat my children in front of me! It’s too evil to even speak what I saw him do!”

Everyone saw the memory overpower Josephine and gathered around in sympathetic concern and emotional support. Both Assad and Tau placed their clawed hands on her shoulders to show her they cared about her distress. Leila reached out and grabbed Josephine’s forearm as it dangled, holding it gently, saying softly, “I understand, and so does Hannibal. Believe me, both of us understand what you’re saying, but now that this memory has burst forth, you need to let it go, just as I had to let go of the horror of my fall in Caveria. You are not alone in this, Jo. Let us help you bear this burden.”

Hannibal and Selina walked up to Josephine very quickly. Hannibal handed off the Scepter to Harry as he stopped in front of Josephine, who was almost doubled over from the horror of the atrocity she remembered. Selina instantly wrapped her arms around the giant cyborg and purred deeply for her, cooing, “It’s going to be okay, Jo. Let it out. Like the memories of what Bolthor did to you, this memory is poisoning your mind and heart. Let the pain and horror you witnessed out. Rid yourself of this horror. Hannibal and I are here to help you cope with it.”

Hannibal reached out and took both of Josephine’s organic hands in his, getting her attention. He looked her in the eye with great compassion, knowing how terrible the memories of witnessed atrocities can corrode a mind and soul. “Listen to me, Jo,” he said softly and compassionately with authority, “Selina is right. You need to get this thing out into the open so we can deal with it. Believe me; I know how an atrocity can poison your mind and soul for I’ve committed my share of them in my dark past. If you don’t release the pain and horror of what you saw, it will eventually destroy you.”

Josephine shook her head, insisting, “I can’t speak it! I saw what happened when he made that sacrifice! It’s evil beyond all evil! It opened a physical hell gate of incomprehensible size and released the hordes of the Abyss into our world! I cannot, dare not speak it! If I do, it will be the end of us all!”

“I see,” Hannibal said soberly with a grim tone, “You fear speaking it will cause the rift to reappear, don’t you?”

“Yes,” Josephine sobbed, “But now that the memory has been opened, I can no longer contain it! Just by being here, the lock on that memory shattered and now I’m being consumed by it. I have to share it, but I cannot speak of it openly in this place. Please, help me.”

Hannibal looked deep into her eyes with sympathy, compassion, but also grim determination. “Then show it to me alone,” he ordered bluntly. “Release this memory to me and rid yourself of this horror that’s threatening to override your system. Let me see what you saw so you can be free of this terror.”

Without warning, Josephine leaned down and in, touching her forehead to Hannibal’s, knocking off his hat in the process. “See what I saw, and share what I cannot,” she pleaded. “I know it’s important to our mission here. That’s why it’s such a torment for me.”

With those words, Hannibal instantly became aware of her mind and memories, not just seeing the atrocity, but also a powerful demon of fear trying to stop the sharing of the memory. In a blink of an eye, the mere presence of Hannibal’s mind sweeping through Josephine’s memory banks and organic memories caused the demon to flee in terror of him. With the demon gone, Hannibal saw the memory clearly and gasped in complete utter horror at the unspeakable atrocity committed by Bolthor when he first attacked Srandi in his last siege. Upon seeing the horror through Josephine’s eyes, he let go of her hands and instantly wrapped his arms around her in a caring embrace. “Oh you poor girl,” he cooed, “No wonder you couldn’t speak of it. That horror is almost as bad as what Lord Grimm tried to do to me in the Sacred Circle. Let it out, Jo. Release the terror, horror, and hate it instilled in you. Let it flow out of you into the ground beneath our feet like water. You no longer have to bear that terror alone. I will help you bear this travesty of justice and together, we will punish the Black Prince for what he did to Bolthor, to those people, and to everyone else he’s destroyed. Be free of this burden in the name of Jesus, Jo.”

Josephine’s sobs of terror slowly subsided into whimpers of relief as her mental state slowly solidified. “Thank you, Hannibal,” she whimpered, “I feel free of its poisonous influence thanks to you, though the terrible weight of the memory remains.”

Hannibal smiled as he released her from the hug, looking into her face with a warm smile. “Glad I could help,” he chimed, “It’s the least I could do after everything you’ve done for me. By the way, does that memory still terrorize you?”

“Strangely, no,” Josephine answered with some puzzlement. “I’m not afraid of it now, though I don’t think I can speak about it yet. What Bolthor did to those people left a wound on my psyche that’s yet to heal properly.”

“I know exactly what you mean,” Hannibal replied knowingly, “You can’t witness an evil of that magnitude and not have it scar you for life, but trust me. In time, you will be able to share it verbally. When that happens, the memory will no longer haunt you and you will truly begin to heal from it.”

“Thank you for helping me tame that memory and my fear of it, Hannibal,” Josephine said with deep gratitude while leaning in and kissing him gently on the cheek. “I’ll never forget how you helped me today.”

Hannibal smiled warmly at her as she stood back up, taking her place behind Leila’s wheelchair. “You’re welcome,” he chimed. “Besides, that’s what family does for each other: they help one another in their times of need.”

“That we do,” Enoch agreed, “Are you okay now, Jo?”

“I am,” Josephine answered calmly now that her mind and emotions had stabilized, “The memory cascade concerning the atrocity Bolthor committed here caught me completely by surprise and I panicked. I didn’t know how to resolve the problem. Fortunately, Hannibal knew exactly how to calm me down.”

“That’s very good,” Tau purred, “Your knowledge of what happened here is invaluable and can help us see the big picture. According to you, your husband committed some insanely heinous atrocity outside the city in order to bring in reinforcements to finish off Thoth. Is that right?”

“It is,” Josephine agreed, “But I won’t speak of what I saw Bolthor do in order to open the rift other than to say he personally slaughtered all those people to do it. Maybe later after I’ve managed to get a better emotional handle on the atrocity will I actually tell it. However, Hannibal knows exactly what I saw, so you can ask him.”

“Fair enough, Miss Josephine,” Tau rumbled with a sober smile, “I can accept that. So, Beowulf...what did Josephine’s husband do that was so bad she refuses to tell it?”

Hannibal sighed deeply, his face turning stern and cold while facing Tau. “Jo is right in saying what Bolthor did should not be spoken,” he declared icily. “It’s the single greatest atrocity committed by the Dark Powers in history. To be blunt, Bolthor used both prisoners and innocents as blood sacrifices to the Most Ancient Darkness in the largest gate opening and summoning ritual ever performed on this planet. He exercised of the darkest, vilest of black magic combined with the alien tech of the Etherians and the Dark Gods to open a gateway not to the Nexus to grab Old Ones for his war, but into the Abyss itself to summon the dark Berserker Legions of Baal. In the memory Jo showed me, at the moment of sacrifice, the very fabric of the universe split open just beyond the perimeter of the Stone Giants on the plain, allowing hellfire and the Berserker legions of Baal into our reality, at which time they went on the warpath, destroying every living thing in their path.”

Hannibal pointed to the giant demon skeletons lying amongst the other human and alien dead, declaring ominously, “There’s your proof Bolthor did what Jo said he did. I’m sure had the Almighty not ended the war Himself with the Kragonar, this city and fortress would have been erased and we would not be here about to enter the last Bastion of our ancestors. Because of the discovery we’ve made here, we can’t assume anything about the nature of what happened here. This is obviously why I felt so ill at ease when I came here. The Darkness still contaminates this place, even after twelve and an half thousand cycles. We must now go in prepared to deal with the same Dark Forces that attacked this place. They took this place by force, overran it in an orgy of blood and destruction. Now we’re going to take it back, just as I took Tiamat from the Dark Powers. Do you all understand what I’m saying?”

“We do,” Assad stated grimly, “And if I might be so bold, this is why you felt Srandi calling to you, Beowulf. It called you home to free it of the darkness that still haunts it. We will follow you in and help you purge this holy sanctuary of the Darkness that still contaminates it.” Everyone else strongly agreed with Assad’s declaration, swearing to take back the last Caverias stronghold no matter what it took.

“Good,” Hannibal replied as he retrieved the Scepter from Harry. “We’re all on the same page here. Because of the darkness I’m still sensing from inside, we’re going to have to watch our step and take our time. I hate to say it, but we’re going to have to do this the hard way: clearing this place room by room just to be safe.”

“Agreed,” Nemesis rumbled icily, “We must not take anything for granted, and be ready to take out any hostile force opposing us. This fortress must be cleansed in order for it to be safe for the people.”

“My thoughts exactly,” Enoch agreed soberly, “So what are we waiting around here for. We have much work to do. Take us in, Hannibal.”

“Let’s do this,” Hannibal replied as Selina handed his hat back to him. She picked it up when Josephine accidentally knocked it off when she touched foreheads with Hannibal. Putting his hat on, Hannibal’s demeanor went sober, almost icy. “Come on,” he ordered coldly as his warrior explorer persona came forth again. “Watch your step and don’t get in front of me. Tau, Assad...I want you to cover Jo and Leila. Samantha, you come up here with Selina, Harry, and me. Just stay a couple of steps behind me, okay?”

Samantha walked up in her mechanized tiger armor, pulling her large battle-axe from her back, readying it. “You got it, Hannibal,” she chimed, “Now I get to see how you work up close.”

Hannibal smiled wryly while glancing at Samantha. “Just keep your eyes open, Sam,” he answered. “Even if we don’t find hostiles in here, there still may be traps set by both the defenders and the Emperor’s forces that could pose a great threat to us.”

“Got it,” Samantha stated. She suddenly pulled a short sword from her armor and offered it to Selina, saying, “Here Selina; you might want this, just in case.”

Selina took the short sword with a smile, saying gratefully, “Thank you, Samantha. I’ll be sure to return it to you when we’re done.”

“You’re welcome, sis,” Samantha replied, returning Selina’s smile. “I couldn’t let you walk into this place without as much as a knife on you after what we’ve just seen.”

“She does have a point,” Harry chimed as he flanked Samantha with his war hammer ready for action. “Better to have it and not need it rather than not having it and needing it. It shows good judgment.”

“That it does,” Hannibal stated as he smacked the scepter against the floor, again lighting its crystal spearhead. “Stay close to me, Selina and keep your cat eyes open for trouble.”

“You got it,” Selina replied, “By the way, any idea of where we should go first?”

“My instinct is telling me to find the throne room first,” Hannibal replied soberly. “There’s something important there we need to find. I’m sure of it.”

“Then the throne room will be our first stop,” Enoch declared, hearing Hannibal’s answer to Selina’s question. “Let’s go, Hannibal; the clock is ticking.”

“Indeed it is,” Hannibal agreed, “Follow me and keep the chatter down. The last thing we want to do is antagonize the restless spirits in this place.” With that, he took the first steps into the alcove entrance of Srandi, followed by Selina, Samantha, and Harry just a few steps behind him. Nemesis and Ana moved along just behind Selina, Samantha, and Harry. The rest of the team followed with Tau and Assad assisting Josephine and Leila with Enoch, Tyr, and Carver protecting the rear.