Tyler took each step with care as he walked down a corridor filled with red light. The stone walls caught the light and seemed to glow the closer he came to the source.
Before him stood an arch leading into a vast chamber. Men and women in red stood throughout the room, each facing a stone slab at the room's center. There was a tension in the room, a heavy weight that settled on the shoulders of each cultist.
Morrigan was chained to the stone on top of the slab, her body shaking. Medical equipment surrounded her. Tubes weaved in and out of her veins, draining what her body desperately sought to replace.
Gemma was nowhere in sight, which Tyler found strange. She wasn't stupid. She knew there would be retaliation. It made sense for the best of the cult to guard Morrigan. Why wasn't she seeing to it personally?
Tyler realized how exposed he was standing out in the open. He scanned the area and turned away, moving on the balls of his feet to hide behind a nearby pillar.
Tyler took a deep breath, clutching the bronze so tight he heard the metal strain under the pressure. He turned the outer shell, rotating each section exactly as he had been shown.
When the final segment clicked into place, the sphere gave a soft, white glow. The light filled the lines marking the outside shell.
Tyler glanced around the pillar to see if the sound went unnoticed, then felt a sharp point at his back. He turned and saw a man and a woman, both with their hoods up and with black masks covering their faces.
The woman held the knife as the man reached for Tyler. The woman grabbed the man from behind, covering his mouth. The man raised tried to reach her face, and she drove the blade into the pit of his arm.
She gently lowered him to the ground and removed her mask. Tyler gave a soft sigh of relief. Mal stared back at him, cleaning the blade on the man's robe.
She whispered through heavy breathing, "Lucky you."
"What are you doing here?" Tyler asked.
"I've been undercover in The Fiery Lock for months. You're here for Morrigan?"
"Yeah, and to give Gemma a hard time."
She nodded, "We've been waiting ages to knock Gemma down a peg." she looked down at the orb and smiled, "It's a clever idea." She handed him the knife, "You better love the shit out of her, or it won't work."
Tyler nodded and took the knife, "Any chance you can stir up trouble? Isla was hurt pretty bad upstairs."
Mal turned and moved toward the stairs. "No worries. I'll raise some hell. Revolution calls."
When she rushed up the stairs. He heard footsteps approaching and pressed the button on the sphere.
A loud series of hums and drones emitted from the orb. The glow went from white to blinding blue. Tyler turned the corner of the pillar, smiled, and rolled the sphere on the ground toward the center of the room.
Tyler's retreated behind the pillar, pressing against in hopes it would help shield him from the blast. He heard screams followed by a puff of wind as as a sudden flash of light wrapped around the pillars.
Tyler screamed. The light left him blind, though not permanently. It seared his skin, leaving it blistered and charred. The flash was gone in an instant. Tyler's screaming echoed off the walls, the only sound to be heard in an otherwise empty room.
Tyler's vision returned but remained blurry as he crawled along the hot stone floor. His fingers worked through piles of ash as he inched forward.
The journey to the slab was long, and painful. He tried to lift himself up and fell to the floor, his head slamming against the stone.
The sudden rush of pain made him scream in frustration. He propped himself up, bracing himself against the slab. A pile of scarlet ashes covered the surface of the stone. The ashes were dense, heavier than they should be.
He rested his hand on the stone, nestled in the bed of ash. He brought the knife up, and closed his eyes. For a moment he faultered. If this didn't work, she was gone. She was dead, and he killed her. His muscles tensed up as he drove the knife into his hand.
The blood dripped from the wound onto the ashes resulting in a soft hiss. As the blood poured, the pool on the slab grew, spilling over into the floor. Tyler fell back, the room suddenly growing cold.
He knew it was working. There was no way he bled that much in so little time. It poured forth from the top of the slab, the room slowly flooding the floor.
Tyler noticed a disturbance, a form beginning to emerge. A skeletal hand reached out to him. The arm followed, muscle and tissue growing around the hand and up the wrist. The body came next, flesh growing over the exposed tissue on the arm.
Tyler watched her crawl out of the bloody womb, her face twisted by pain as she couldn't muster a scream. Morrigan took her first breath, and released a wail of both agony and rage.
Tyler noticed his vision fading to black, the blood loss taking its toll. He tried to reach for the coin, but his feeble attempts were useless. He remembered this feeling from the rite. He was dying.
He watched Morrigan return to her senses. She didn’t look like herself, still caught in the throes of passion. Gunfire rang out from above as she crawled toward him. At first he wanted to resist, but he knew it wouldn't work. He prepared for death, ready to accept whatever date she thought fitting for him.
In the darkness that nearly took him, he felt a hand wrapping around his. He felt a strange sensation, like an injection without a needle. Blood poured back into his veins. He opened his eyes and Morrigan sat above him, the knife in her palm with blood dripping from the wound.
She was crying, a desperate longing in her eyes. His wounds healed, though it took time to shake away the fatigue. She didn't speak. She only trembled at his voice.
"Morrigan?" He said. He stood still, "Are you okay?"
She didn't answer, unable to even look Tyler in the eye. Was she afraid of him, or herself? She looked up, her attention drawn by the sounds of fighting, and narrowed her eyes. Morrigan turned away walking toward the stairs. Alll Tyler could do was follow.
Okay. So, I don't have many specifics to comment on, but this chapter felt like a first draft. It lacked the polish and sheen found in your edited chapters. The prose was more stilted and repetitive as well as having a less crafted sense of imagery to it. Some of the action, specifically surrounding Mal and where she left to, is a bit ambiguous. Touching that up in edit's wouldn't be a bad thing. The last thing is Morrigan. I like that she's still swept up in the Passion even after pretty much being resurrected. However, you kind of don't explain her fear and why she doesn't attack Tyler. It's also not clear who she's angry at in your last line, whether it be the gunfire or Tyler. Either way, this chapter's content was fine, but the quality of the content seemed almost out of place.
Nooooooo. And that's what I get for editing passed 4 am. Ok so I reread it and you're right. I apologize. Let me redo this one.
Ok. I only reread this chapter because I've gotten myself a large bit distracted by other things, but I liked it a lot more. The last line is still very ambiguous, though, at this point, I have to assume you'll expand upon it further in the following chapter. All of the nonsensical points that I had picked up on before have been pretty well corrected and it felt a lot more on par with your other writing. Technically, some of the sentence structure could do with a bit of a push in the right direction -- the kind of thing for a final edit -- but other than that, this was a lot better! Great job.
Thank you kind sir. Im working on these four chapters in reverse to make them more coherent. (another reason why im posting the chapters more than doing edits as i go.) Im still kind of working on this as I checked in early yesterday, but im really happy it made more sense than before. I like my ambiguous chapter endings, dont i xD