Hosannas From The Basements Of Hell
Chapter 3
"Sacrament"
A crashing sound, like that of glass shattering woke Cid Highwind from his slumber. Grudgingly, the grizzled airship pilot raised himself up in bed, flicking the lamp light on absently. "The hell..?" He muttered, shaking off the mental cobwebs of sleep.
From her side of the bed, Shera mumbled something unintelligible from the depths of her slumber.
"Go back to sleep, hon'." Cid told her. "I'll go see what it is.." He leaned over and planted a quick kiss on Shera's cheek, leaving her to her dreams.
"Better not be those goddamn neighbor kids again.." The captain muttered, putting on some clothes, before heading out into the hallway, still rubbing the sleep from his eyes. It felt strangely cold in the house, he noted, as he turned the corner..
Any remaining sleep fatigue in his body quickly departed as he noticed that the front door of the house has been smashed in. Cid hurriedly turned back towards the study, throwing open the large cabinet leaning against the wall, reaching for his trusty halberd.
But it wasn't there..
"Looking for something..?" a voice taunted him.
Cid turned his head towards the open doorway again, in the direction of the voice. Silhouetted in the doorframe was a figure clad in robes, holding Cid's spear in one hand, its tip gleaming in the faint moonlight..
"Damn it.." Cloud cursed under his breath.
Someone had tampered with the fuel injection. His motorcycle simply sputtered in protest, and went dead, for the third time in a row. As he reached down towards the engine to see exactly what was wrong, he could hear someone running up towards him, rushing him cold.
Before he could react, he felt a sharp blow on the head, followed by blank darkness and silence..
DCLXVI
The next thing he knew, he was slowly being dragged across a grimy floor. As he struggled to move, he noticed that his hands were tied behind his back. He tried to focus on what little light there was in his new surroundings, as his vision became clear again.
Two figures dressed in black robes were dragging him through a decrepit, abandoned building, with a third figure following closely behind. The robed men moved him into a small, dark room, leaving him laying against the wall.
The two figures that had been dragging him across the floor left, leaving the third one alone with him in the room. "He's all yours, Alastor." One of the figures spoke as it departed.
Cloud leaned his head against the wall for a second, letting out a deep breath. If he weren't feeling so groggy from being knocked out, he might actually have been scared..
Glancing over to his left, he noticed a small wooden table next to him. On the table was a metal tray, with several sharp-looking cutting tools laid out on it.
Not good..
The third figure, Alastor, stood still in the middle of the room, looking down at him. Cloud looked back at his captor, trying to make out his face in the dark. "Who are you?" he asked calmly. "Where am I?" He nearly croaked the words. His throat felt hoarse, and the dusty air of the abandoned building wasn't helping much.
The robed figure didn't reply, but instead walked over to the table next to him. "Too many questions, yes, yes." The man spoke, glancing down at him, as he picked up one of the scalpels from the tray, examining it intently. "That is your problem, Mr. Strife."
The figure walked over to the other side of the room, gesturing as it spoke. "If you hadn't been snooping around, mayhaps you would not have found yourself here?" The robed man asked rhetorically. "Then again, who knows? Maybe you would." He continued, turning back towards his captive.
Cloud snorted, shaking his head slowly. His captor seemed quite deranged, to say the least, talking to himself like that.
"In any case, you are here now." Alastor concluded, offering a smile devoid of any good nature or humor.
"What do you want?" Cloud asked impatiently, staring his captor in the face.
"It is not your turn to ask questions, no, no." The man replied. "It is I who will know things now."
"Go to hell." Cloud replied, closing his eyes.
In spite of himself, the robed man chuckled ever so slightly. "I should hope." He replied, amused. "Now..." Alastor said, growing more serious in his tone of voice. "Everyone has a breaking point, yes?" He said, kneeling down in front of his captive, holding the small scalpel up to Cloud's eye.. "We'll just have to see where yours lies."
Cloud cast a sideways glance at the man, shrinking away from the scalpel in his hand. As much as he didn't want to admit it, fear was beginning to settle into him. He knew what was going to happen next. During his army days, he had, among other things, been trained to resist and endure torture. But his captor was right. Everyone broke eventually. It was just a matter of time..
"We'll just see if you're still in any shape to talk, by then.." Alastor said, grinning a cold, insane grin. "Now, who have you been talking to?" He asked innocuously.
When there was no reply, the robed figure began to move the scalpel downward, choosing a spot just below the shoulderblades to begin cutting. He made a short, but deep cut, before removing the scalpel again. Cloud flinched, but managed to resist the urge to cry out in pain.
"What do you know about us?" The man asked. Cloud said nothing. His silence seemed only to gratify his demented captor. When he received no answer, the man in robes continued digging further in with the scalpel, twisting the knife in the wounds he was making. Cloud breathed hard, trying to ignore the pain, but he found it getting harder every moment to do so..
"Who else knows?" Alastor demanded quietly, a twisted, perverse look of pleasure forming on his face, Cloud realized, to his horror. He was actually enjoying this..
He tried to hold out just a little longer, willing himself not to scream, as the knife pierced deeper into his flesh..
Tifa Lockheart was getting rather annoyed.
She was quite used to receiving hoots and catcalls due to her figure and looks. It was something that she had both enjoyed and endured for the greater part of her life, but the group that had been harassing her after she had left her hotel room earlier that night was apparently still following her.
Walking down the streets of Costa Del Sol a little bit faster, she resolved to try and lose them in a hurry. She glanced back, to see if they were still with her, when she accidentally bumped into someone.
"Sorry, I-" she started to apologize, before being cut off.
"Heeyy, where ya goin' in such a hurry?" The man asked, barring her path.
"None of your business." She replied coldly. "Now, get out of my way."
As she made to move past him, the man reached up, grabbing her by the arm, pushing her back. "Or what?" the man asked, slipping a knife from his jacket pocket. "You've got a little time to play, don'cha?"
The gang that had been following her caught up with them, closing in on her. Before she knew it, she was surrounded.
"You know, a pretty young thing like yourself could get hurt wandering around at this time of night." The man said, smiling, before signaling for the others to attack.
Tifa quickly stepped back as the first one of them charged. Her attacker was sent crashing into the ground as he clumsily swung his knife at her, leaning way too far into his attack. Another two punks came at her with their switch-blades, but their attack was slow and predictable , allowing her ample time to ward off their attempts. She caught one of her assailant's arms behind her own, dealing him a swift punch in the lower back, followed by a sharp knee to the temple, rendering him unconscious.
The last one charged at her, bringing his switchblade down in a slow arc. Unfortunately for him, Tifa saw the attack coming, giving her the opportunity to counter it. She reflexively caught her attacker's wrist in mid-air, then quickly spun around behind his back, putting him into a painful reverse wristlock. The sudden pain shooting through her assailant's arm caused him to drop his weapon, which landed on the ground with a dull metallic clank.
Having rendered her attacker helpless, Tifa pressed her knee into his back, pushing him further into the sandy ground. "Hey, let go, bitch!" The punk squealed pathetically, as she forced him to his knees.
"Fuck this!" the gang's leader said, panicking. "Let's get outta here!"
The other gang members, discouraged by their chosen victim's surprising ferocity, began to disperse. Once they were gone, Tifa breathed a sigh of relief. Apparently, they were just some punks out searching for trouble. Certainly not the types that would actively go after a group like Avalanche. Still, it left her with a bad feeling in her stomach. Something felt wrong tonight, as if the whole world were aligning against them..
She began walking down the streets again, in the direction of the docks, moving faster with every step.
Cloud rested his head against the cool concrete wall, slowly drawing in one breath after another. He tried to focus on what little light there was in the room, emanating from a lantern sitting on the table next to him.
"I must have passed out.." he thought.
He tried to remember where he was.
"Captured.." he realized, "I was captured earlier.."
He winced slightly as he tried to move, realizing that he was quite badly lacerated on the upper part of his body. His throat felt dry, and he was starting to get rope burn from trying to free himself..
The man called Alastor had left, for the time being, he noticed. He could hear several voices drifting down the corridor. Focusing all his attention on the half-closed doorway, he could catch snippets of their conversation.
"..Say what you will, Ose.."
"...Lord Belial is displeased with our progress here.."
"We saw him speaking to one of the Gatekeepers earlier.."
"..He knows nothing of value or consequence. Let's kill him and be done with it.."
Suddenly feeling very alert and awake, Cloud shuffled to his left, knocking into the table next to him, causing the tray with the cutting tools to spill all over the floor around him. With his hands still tied behind his back, he grasped desperately for any sharp implement he could catch..
"Now, what have you done?" Alastor's voice came. Cloud looked up to see his captor standing in the doorway. The robed man walked over, picking up the metal tray, and began to methodically place the cutting tools back on it.
"What a mess.." Alastor spoke conversationally, kneeling down to pick up the various knives, scalpels and other implements strewn across the floor. "Can't have this, no.."
Just as his captor leaned over to pick up one of the knives laying next to him, Cloud attacked suddenly. With his hands now freed, he drove the scalpel he had caught deep into Alastor's throat, shredding open his carotid artery as he cut outwards at an angle.
Alastor jumped away, startled, blood spilling freely from his wound. Alarmed, he tried to call for help, but the only thing coming out of his mouth was more blood.
Capitalizing on his enemy's surprise, Cloud rushed up to his feet, kicking Alastor in the gut. The robed man crashed into the doorway at an awkward angle, rebounding off the corner of the doorway. Using his own inertia against him, Cloud caught Alastor by the back of his head, smashing his captor through the wooden table, knocking him unconscious.
Getting up again, Cloud paused to compose himself and catch his breath. He had little time to admire his handiwork, however, as the other robed men came running down the corridor, having heard all the commotion. Two more robed figures came bursting through the doorway, quickly surveying the chaotic scene in the room, their cult's distinctively jagged knives drawn.
Realizing what had occurred, the first of them lunged at Cloud with his knife, stabbing away wildly. Thinking fast, Cloud dodged the attack, catching his assailant's arm just above the elbow. The ex-soldier quickly drove down his free hand on his attacker's forearm, forcing it's joint to move the wrong way, splitting it down to the bone with a sickening cracking sound. The robed figure screamed and hissed at him, revealing a sunken, old face and a mouth full of rotten, black teeth and bile.
Before the other cultist had time to think or react, Cloud began to reverse the attack. Gripping what was left of his assailant's broken arm, he released his left hand to deliver a final, backhanded blow to the man's face, knocking him into his friend still standing in the doorway, nearly sending him crumpling to the floor along with the body of his comrade.
Pushing his deceased accomplice out of the way, the final cultist charged at the blond swordsman. But his intended target was ready for him. Seeing the attack coming, Cloud easily batted his knife-arm out of the way before dealing him a right-handed hook that sent him reeling, causing him to drop his dagger to the floor. Unfazed, the cultist charged him again, screaming, catching the blond swordsman by surprise, forcing him to the ground. The two of them wrestled on the ground, each looking for a way to gain the upper hand.
Cloud struggled with his assailant. His strength felt somehow unnatural, as if the man were much stronger than his frail body should have allowed him to be. The robed man, pinning him to the ground momentarily, quickly snatched one of the many weapons strewn across the concrete floor, a long blade. He raised the blade sharply above his head, driving it down as hard as he could. Cloud, barely reacting in time, caught his hands by their wrists, keeping them from completing their downward arc. But his assailant was slowly forcing the blade further down, towards the blond swordsman's neck..
Acting on pure instinct, Cloud let go with one of his hands, instead gripping the blade by its naked edge as it continued sinking closer to its intended destination. Blood poured from his palm as the blade cut into his hand. The robed man cackled insanely as the blade brushed up against the blond swordsman's neck.
But his moment of victory was short-lived.
Cloud's attacker was left with a look of incredulous surprise on his face as the blond swordsman, struggling to bend the blade sideways, snapped the bottom half of the weapon off. Without wasting any time, Cloud drove the broken edge of the blade through the bottom of his enemy's jaw. The cultist's face was frozen with a look somewhere between utter surprise and horror as the blade pierced right through his cranium, emerging again through the top of his head.
Pushing the now-dead body of his attacker from top of him, Cloud sat up again, breathing hard. As he waited for the adrenaline rush to pass, he could hear someone else in the room, breathing tersely.
Alastor..
Getting up to his feet, Cloud walked over to the interrogator of the group, still alive. The blond swordsman was amazed that he was even drawing breath after the wounds he had received. Alastor painfully turned over onto his side, as Cloud knelt down next to him. He weakly clutched a small scalpel, stabbing away feebly at his former captive. Cloud simply gripped his hand, forcing him to drop the weapon again. The cultist grunted irritably, resigned to his defeat.
"You're not gonna talk, are you?" Cloud asked earnestly.
Alastor simply glared at him angrily, blood still pooling from the edges of his mouth.
"Then I guess I'll see you in Hell." Cloud said, getting up again. Alastor grinned insanely again, trying to chuckle as best he could. Cloud, moving quickly, walked over behind his former captor, placing him in a headlock. Then, in one swift move, he snapped the man's neck, dropping the robed body to the ground.
Wiping the sweat from his forehead with the back of his hand, Cloud let out a sigh of relief. Surveying the room, he looked around to see the damage done. Three of these mysterious cultists lay dead. Blood was smeared liberally over the floor and walls. Edged weapons of all shapes and sizes lay scattered on the ground, and the wooden table had for the most part been smashed into splinters. It was not a pretty sight..
The blond swordsman took a moment to assess his enemies. They were incredibly aggressive, to the point of being frenzied, but none of them, he could tell, was a trained combatant. "Must be pawns.." Cloud thought. "They can't have been higher-ups, if these cultists are as organized as they appear to be.."
Exhausted, Cloud staggered out of the room, pressing against the wall for support, looking for an exit. As he passed one of the rooms, he noticed that his possessions were laid out on a table at the far end. Seeing that the room was empty, he headed inside to pick up his belonging. As he strapped his sword to his back again, he noticed that his materia, still laying on the table, looked different somehow, less colorful. As he reached out to pick one up, it crumbled into dust in his hands, much to the blond swordsman's surprise.
"Great.." Cloud thought. "I should have figured. Oh, well. It's a good thing they didn't get a chance to do the same thing to my Buster sword.."
Heading for the decrepit building's exit, Cloud was nearly blinded by the bright sunlight, coming in sharp contrast with the building's murky blackness. A few crows stirred as he exited the building, fluttering up into the radiant afternoon sky. The blond swordsman reached for his PHS. From what he could tell, he was somewhere in the ruins of Old Midgar, most likely near the outskirts..
The PHS's autodial quickly connected him with the number he had picked. "Yeah?" Cid's gruff voice came over the other end of the phone.
"Cid." Cloud said. "Are you ok?"
There was a short pause. He heard Cid let out a terse breath on the other end of the line.
"No.." Cid replied, sounding weary. "...Not exactly."
Puzzled, Cloud simply waited for Cid to continue.
"That was you calling last night, wasn't it?" Cid asked.
"Yeah." Cloud replied, more to acknowledge Cid's question than to answer it, as he already knew.
"I already talked to the others." Cid continued. "I know the score."
The airship pilot paused, anger in his voice now. "Cloud... let's get those bastards.."
"We will." Cloud assured him.
"Where are ya, anyway?"
"I'm in the Midgar outskirts." Cloud explained. "Pick me up at the old church."
"I'll be there as soon as I can." Cid replied. "I need to pick up the others first."
"All right. See you soon." Cloud said, ending the call and placing his PHS back in his pocket.
On the other side of the world, Cid laid the phone's receiver back down on the nightstand. Turning over, he looked at Shera's lifeless body, laid out on their bed. Letting out a mournful sigh, the airship captain leaned over her cadaver, her arms respectfully folded across her chest. "I'm sorry, baby.." he said, planting a kiss on her forehead.
Getting up, Cid walked out of the room, glancing at his deceased wife one last time before turning away again. He reached inside his jacket pocket for a pack of smokes, lighting one up as he stepped over the robed figure's body, laying on the floor. The whole house bore the marks of their fight earlier the preceding night, with shattered furniture and broken glass littered everywhere.
"Time to end this." he said, exhaling a cloud of smoke as he stepped outside of his house, walking towards his airship, parked on the outskirts of his hometown..
As he made his way towards the Old Church in what used to be Midgar's slums, Cloud noticed a figure dressed in black robes, heading in a similar direction, carefully clutching a black book lined with red ink on the cover. By process of elimination, he realized he was looking at the man identifying himself as Ose, one of the higher-ups.
"Hey!" he called. The robed figure, startled by its discovery, glanced at Cloud, before dashing away in the opposite direction. Despite being as tired as he was, Cloud decided to give chase, hurdling the scrap-iron remains laying here and there on the ground, blocking their paths. Fortunately, Ose was not so quick on his feet, apparently, and he soon found himself catching up to the man in black.
As he was about to be caught by his pursuer, Ose ducked into one of the ruined buildings, running as fast as he possibly could. Cloud chased the black-robed figure down a long corridor, towards a single room at the end. As he neared the room, he could hear a muffled cry of pain, followed by the sound of something like concrete breaking. As he burst into the room, however, he noticed that it was completely empty.
Looking around quickly, the blond swordsman saw that there were no other exits to the room. None of the walls in the room had been disturbed, and the ceiling was completely intact. It was as if the man in black had simply vanished into thin air..
Taking another look around the room, Cloud noticed a red circle that was drawn on the far end of the room. Reaching out to touch it, he realized that the circle was drawn from blood, still drying on the concrete wall.
"What the hell?" he muttered, examining the circle.
The occurrence was an ominous one, to say the least. People didn't just disappear into nothingness, Cloud thought. At least, that's what the logical part of his brain was screaming. But something else told him that these were no ordinary people he was dealing with. He was going to have to find some answers, and soon..
Author's Ramble:
Well, again it's been quite a while since the last time I updated anything, so I won't make any false promises that I'll be updating again quickly. I'll try though. Hope you found this chapter entertaining. I've found that I especially enjoy working on the fight scenes, as they require a certain amount of mental choreography to be effective. Also, I try to go for a grittier, more physical approach to them than most other writers here. It's fun.
Anyway, thanks for reading this far. I'll try and update this story again quickly if I can. For those of you waiting for the next chapter of "Empires", I assure you yet again that I haven't abandoned it, and it'll be the next thing I work on. Stay tuned, everyone.