"Why?" D'Arden asked, his voice echoing like thunder.
"I…" the boy screamed again as he tried to speak, and D'Arden could see the flesh beginning to melt from his face. "I came to warn you! Some… something is coming!"
"YOU SHOULD HAVE STAYED AWAY!" D'Arden roared, awash in anguish and rage and confusion and loss, for he knew already that the boy was doomed.
With no choice but to leave the boy to his hideous fate, D'Arden turned back to the pool of manna, plunging his hands deep within it again even as he dropped his sword to the floor. The shrieks of the boy faded rapidly to piteous wailing, and then merely to moans as the manna forcefully drew out his soul and transformed his flesh, likely into something truly hideous. Exposure to the light of the manna would reveal the worst in a normal man, destroy the facade of normal humanity and bring forth the truth from them in the most painful manner possible.
As the flow of manna within the font shifted from corruption to purity, D'Arden felt the energy immediately flow into him. He felt rejuvenated, his mind snapped back to full alertness. Now that the balance of power within the font had tipped in his direction, he could draw his power from it. He felt elated, the joy surging through him as surely as the power itself did.
He withdrew his hands at last when he felt as though he was brimming with so much of the manna energy that he felt radiant and nearly invincible. It was only then that he remembered the plight of the poor soul, laying on the ground behind him, completely destroyed by the energy that sustained him.
D'Arden turned, expecting to see some horrifying vision lying on the ground just outside the door of the font chapel. He had seen many men in his time that had been struck by the light of the manna font, most of whom had turned into something resembling a creature out of a child's nightmare or campfire ghost story. They usually ended up with their limbs twisted about, looking as though they had broken themselves several times in an attempt to get away from the horrid things that were happening to them.
Despite his desperate hope, there was no solace to be found here.
The boy’s innocent form had become twisted into a frightening monstrosity, its flesh blackened and withered. As he watched, it scrabbled to its feet, sporting long claws that had sprouted unceremoniously from its hands. Only a few strands of wiry hair remained of the boy’s shock of brown, and those strands stood out straight from the creature’s head. The boy’s clothes had sloughed off the creature’s greatly reduced mass, and the beast stood naked before him, though nothing remained that would define it as indecent. It entirely ignored the soldier’s blade on the ground between them, and instead it stared at him with yellow eyes that burned with hunger. Mikel had not been exposed to the light of the manna font long enough to die, it seemed… but only long enough to awaken.
The fel beast let out a shriek, a cry of both pain and hunger.
It lowered its head and rushed at him.
Sorrowfully, D’Arden simply stepped aside. The boy’s lack of experience in the matter of fighting even showed through to this hungry monster that he’d become. In a single motion, D’Arden drew the crystalline blade from the scabbard on his back and cleaved downward, splitting the beast in twain at the waist.
The creature that was once Mikel tumbled to the ground in two halves, each one quickly dissolved by the blue purifying flames.
D’Arden stood in the silent streets for a moment, his head bowed.
Then, in his ears rang the boy's warning, as clear as though he'd said it that same moment. Something is coming.
He slid the manna blade back into its sheath and stepped outside the chapel, slamming the door closed behind him. He looked to the left and to the right, but he could neither see nor hear anything approaching. What had the boy seen or heard, then, that had bothered him enough to make him enter the chapel?
The sun had set over the horizon only a few minutes before, and darkness was beginning to settle in. As he stood there in the cold with a breeze blowing across him, he heard a scuttling sound, and then a chattering in some language that he could not decipher, though it sounded ancient and stilted like a philosopher's tongue.
The sound was rapidly retreating in the direction from which he and Mikel had come a few minutes before. He stared in that direction, knowing that less than a mile away stood the gate to the Old City.
That, then, was his next destination. Whatever it was that was scrabbling across the cobblestones was unmistakably heading in that direction, and though it could potentially be a distraction – some minion sent by the demon to lead him down the wrong path and away from his lair – it could also be something important, exactly the direction that he needed to be going.
He had no other leads, and his only guide to the city was dead. The font here was purified, and he knew that if he waited too long, the demon's forces would come to reclaim it.
D’Arden looked toward the font chapel where Mikel had fallen, refusing to lay eyes on where the fel beast that had replaced him had died. He had seen too many things like this in his short lifetime, too many innocent lives stolen away by the power he served, and the corruption against which he fought. His dark hair streamed outward in a soft breeze that passed, and his black cloak flared outward, casting a dark shadow across the door of the chapel.
Wasted life was an incredible shame.
Shaking his head slowly, the Arbiter set off down the street.
Part IV: The Old City
D’Arden recalled the streets with more clarity this time as he walked along them with purpose. The sun had set beyond the horizon only a few minutes before, and already stars were beginning to appear in the cold night sky. The Deadmoon was rising over the trees to the east, as it did every night, and though it now appeared as a haunting orange in the sky, soon it would bathe the landscape in its pale bone-white glow, draining the color from everything and rendering the world in shades of gray.
Even in the dim light of the setting sun and the rising moon, D’Arden found that he remembered the way through the streets, back along the route they had come when retreating from the ancient gate that led to the Old City. Calessa was one of the oldest cities in the land, having been founded nearly a thousand years before on the site of a river. When that river dried up, the harbor and docks had been abandoned and most of the population moved into the denser part of the city. Eventually, what came to be called the Old City was entirely abandoned, sitting alone and desolate by the side of a dry river.
History was one of the subjects they were required to study most strongly during the strenuous training to become an Arbiter, and he knew the history of most of the cities and towns and lands nearby as well as he knew his own life. With the ability to use the manna freely within the tower, they had been able to call up images of the past and see it as though through a window, watching battles and the rise and fall of kingdoms and knights and the Arbiters themselves, as though it had been somehow recorded in moving pictures. In fact, it had been recorded, in a way – every event left an imprint in the flow of the manna beneath and throughout the land, so that every happening was remembered by the world itself.
Once more he stood before the old, crumbling gate of Old Calessa. He frowned; the scent of the corruption, the feeling of a concentration of power was strong beyond that gate. Though on this side he could feel the manna flowing freely, pure and vibrant, he somehow knew that one step beyond that forgotten gate would land him squarely in unfriendly territory once more.