The Final Campaign of Ceres the Forsaken: Book III
The Telling of Oswald the Overlord, and the Pit of Souls
By Travis, Period 4
Ceres traveled along the path, finding a landscape more twisted and broken than before. Sometimes a corpse would be half buried, the exposed region having been picked clean of any flesh by hellhounds, not the massive three headed entities like Cerberous, but instead incredibly fast and strong wolves. Now and then a corpse would come to life when Ceres passed it, however, these were easily dealt with.
The hellhounds were totally different: fast, strong and cunning, they always traveled in packs of six. After he had killed a few, the ferocious beasts grew more cautious. As he could sense them from a long distance with the power of far seeing, he always had plenty of notice to prepare an ambush.
Word had already spread throughout Hell that there was a mortal with great power roaming through Hell, and that drew bounty hunters eager for special privileges and sport. Many of them were fools and were easily vanquished. There was not one of them who was a challenge to vanquish. Having healed all his wounds with his shield, and gotten rest while invisible, Ceres was stronger than ever. One of the new powers he had inherited from the witch was that he was never hungry or thirsty: he could summon up food or drink at will. Another was the power of flight, with the third being increased strength. He now had the strength of 200 men, and increased speed to boot.
He was content to leave the dead rest and just get out of there; fate was against him in that respect, however, for an army was already massing at the Great Pit of Souls. All the beings killed in Hell collected here, you see. The evil power surrounding that area was without measure. The pit was a well of corrupt energy, and anyone who yielded such power was the leader of that region of Hell.
The one who commanded this energy source was called Oswald the Overlord. No one knew exactly what he looked like except for his corps of Minotaurs, creatures half human and half bull. Minotaurs were ten feet in height, incredibly strong, skilled in the warrior arts, and each wielded a scythe with a blade made of a metal said to be the hardest found in hell. Although only 20 in number, the minotaurs were the most feared foot soldiers in all of Hell.
Ceres saw this army gathering, and moved forward with great speed. He turned invisible and fired into the ranks. The arrow never found its target, however. Before it could strike the personal aide to the Overlord, its head snapped around and the creature’s arm shot out and grabbed the shaft of the arrow. The head stopped just short of splitting the creature’s immense forehead. It barked out orders, and the soldiers spread out, sniffing the air. Ceres knew himself to be in trouble: he may be invisible, but he could still be smelled. A scout got close, sniffing the air where Ceres had been just moments before. Floating ten feet above the ground, Ceres reached down and with a quick twist, broke the monster’s neck. He then turned to the rest of the army.
The scout was found quickly; enraged, the corps kept looking. Ceres was able to pick off three more, slitting the throat of one of them and poisoning the other two with arrows. The commander was raging now; twenty percent of his force was already dead, with their target nowhere to be found. However, Ceres’ luck was running out.
He was going for a fifth kill when his target whirled around with its scythe. He barely managed to block the blow with his shield. At this his concentration broke, revealing him in the middle of the throng of angry beasts.
The minotaur swung again, this time too enthusiastically, for Ceres merely stepped back and let the minotaur strike empty air, beheading it with a single swing. The others lookud at the corpse gushing blood out onto the ground and then attacked en force. Ceres took up the scythe from the body and swung in a large arc, disemboweling four minotaurs who were too close to the attack. The others were upon him before he could swing again, so he discarded the scythe, drawing his trusted sword Titan. While a scythe is devastating at medium range, it is not very useful at close range. This oversight was made painfully obvious by Ceres, who took full advantage of this weakness and pressed in close and quickly overcame his opponents. One after another, Minotaurs attacked, were met, and fell.
The final minotaur, the aide to the Overlord, came in swinging and would surely have decapitated Ceres had he not seen him from the corner of his eye. The creature swung again, managing to rip through Ceres’ clothing and leave a six-inch gash on his abdomen. Enraged by the pain, Ceres knocked the scythe from the beast’s hands and sliced it in half with it. As it died, it laughed and told Ceres that he may have vanquished the minotaurs, but that he would never prevail over the Overlord.
Ceres turned and appraised the man standing there. Ceres told the strange man to arm himself. The small, scrawny man shrugged, and walked over to one of the felled minotaurs. He struggled to lift the weapon, which weighed well over fifty pounds. Ceres laughed at him and called Oswald a weak fool and turned to leave, not thinking it necessary to destroy an enemy as weak as this.
When he turned his back, however, he heard a surreal, maniacal laughing. He turned to see the man with the scythe in his left hand and his right hand extended toward the ceiling. A green aura formed around him, and he felt the normally scorching atmosphere turning freezing cold. The aura intensified, and as it did, the temperature decreased. Ceres felt revulsion when he looked upon the happening, and still the aura increased. When it was over, the Overlord had assumed his true form: the Grim Reaper. The scythe had a blade seven feet long; Oswald was over twenty feet in height, with his cloak revealing no face whatsoever. A skeletal hand beckoned to Ceres, and a deep laugh, like that from the bottom of a well, issued from the apparition. Saying nothing, Ceres drew his sword and faced the monstrosity.
He charged and swung, striking nothing but air. He turned around only to find the specter behind him. He charged again and again, his sword never finding its mark. He paused, and barely managed to avoid getting sliced in two by the huge scythe. He jumped, dodged, feinted, and parried in rapid succession, never finding an advantage. He managed to strike off an arm, only to find that the apparition could summon more power from the pit and regenerate anything he happened to strike.
Seeing that the well was the source of the warrior’s power, Ceres got an idea. He drew the thing closer and closer to the well, purposefully allowing himself to be pushed back. When his heel touched the edge of the liquid in the pit, he felt his leg go numb. Seeing his opportunity, he went invisible and jumped over the monstrosity. Before it could react, Ceres took all his arrows and stuck them deep into the Overlord. He fell into the pit, where the writhing souls of all whom Oswald had used for energy finally got their revenge, pulling the Overlord from many different directions and ripping him into small fragments. Ceres carefully retrieved his arrows which floated to the top, and began to journey away.
Another light, more powerful than the first, fell upon Ceres. Feeling rejuvenated, and all of his wounds having been healed through the power of the shield, Ceres turned from the bloody battleground and headed on to the path leading to the Heart of Hell.