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Inheritance Chapter 9
Rating: PG-13
Disclaimer: Amnesia: The Dark Descent and its settings and characters belong to Frictional Games. I’m only borrowing them for a while.
Summary: AU When Alexander Kesler gets a letter, which claims that she is the only descendant of Alexander of Brennenburg, she is compelled to go investigate. She soon wishes that she hadn’t.
9.
A Reveal
"Walther?"
I couldn't believe my eyes as the man that I thought had died in the prison walked casually into the room past me and Alexander.
"Surprised to see me?" he asked ruefully, and his thick German accent was long gone. In it's place was another one, like he was not native to any language that existed on Earth, which after seeing the memories that Alexander had shown me, made perfect sense.
"Walther, Walter, such strange names you humans use." he continued, confirming my suspicions, as he walked around the large circular room, with its impossibly shaped pointed domed ceiling "Strange how you didn't catch on, though I guess I shouldn't be surprised. Humans had never struck me as particularly bright."
I bristled at the insult, but instead of rising to it, I sat my lamp, still burning, on the floor and gathered Alexander's lifeless form to me. He was beyond needing any protection - I could tell that his soul was still nearby, and I could feel his rage - but I was afraid that Walther, Walter, whatever in the hell his name was, would do something else to cause him harm, and I didn't want that. He had suffered enough.
Walther looked away from his perusal of the room and spared me an amused glance. “Protecting a dead man?” He looked back to the room, to the three tall pillars and the central pedestal with a dark orb sitting atop it.
"Why?" I asked; it was the only thing I could think to say.
"Why what?" he asked without looking at me. Instead his attention was focused on the orb.
"Why did you kill Alexander? Why did you bring me here? Why?"
"Why did I murder Alexander, or Kanael as I know him? It is simple. He had what I wanted. If I couldn't go home and have Kera, then no one could."
"So you were jealous? How very human of you."
Before I could blink, he had streaked across the room and was lifting me of the floor by the collar of my shirt, which forced to drop Alexander, and rage was blazing in his eyes. "Do not even compare me to your primitive species, you bitch! I am more intelligent and more powerful than your entire pathetic family combined, and my most mundane thoughts are beyond your comprehension!" He dropped me and stalked away to look at the orb again. "As to your second question," he continued, calm once more "Kanael was a devious bastard. Only he and Daniel could come into the orb chamber. He set it so their blood was required, and it had to be fresh living blood. Blood begins to die the instant it leaves the body, so the bloody smears left behind by Kanael as he crawled in here did not work. Of course, I did not figure this out until after he had died, when I read the notes that he had left on it. The blood of a relative could work as well, but before I was able to track them down, Daniel's parents and sister had died, leaving no other relatives. That, of course, left me with no choice but to track down Kanael's child, but his foster parents had taken him and fled the country. It would be many years before I was able to track down you. Once I had found you, I had to convince you to come here, which was pathetically easy once I mentioned money." He turned his head to look at me over his shoulder and sneered. "You humans really worship money, but I digress." He turned back to look at the orb again. "Once you were here, I had to get you down here, so I instructed the servants to chase you down here without harming you. If that one that attacked you hadn't bee destroyed by the wards on the back hall, I would have destroyed it myself, but that is another matter. I staged my imprisonment and death in the prison, using one of my intended vitae suppliers, so you wouldn't suspect me, but it was unnecessary, since I'm certain you didn't, am I right?"
I nodded in shock; I hadn't suspected him at all.
"I hadn't counted on Kanael's meddling as I had hoped you would never question what I had told you about him, even if it wasn't true. Of course, even after he told you everything that had happened, you still didn't suspect me. Oh yes, I watched you trek through the castle, I heard your conversations with him. You never once suspected me, even when you saw the torture rooms still in use and Kanael explained how the demons were summoned and created, your feeble human mind failed to put the facts together." He clapped his hands together, and began to make strange gestures and draw odd symbols in the air with his fingers. "And now, you have done what I wanted you to do. You have opened the orb chamber for me, so that I may return home."
Over my dead body. I thought angrily, and he turned back to look at me, amused.
"That can be arranged, you know." he said with a dark smile that didn't reach his eyes. "I can ensure that you spend the rest of eternity here, with your dear grandfather, but first, I think I'll make you watch my ultimate triumph while I open the portal. Once it's open, I'll take care of you properly. Now stay." He pointed at me, and suddenly, I found myself unable to move. I could breath, but all of my other muscles ignored my frantic commands, which gave me no choice to watch as Walther began a series of gestures and chants.
I called out mentally for Alexander, but when he responded, he sounded weak and distant, and I somehow knew that Walther had managed to restrain him as well, how I don't know. As Walther chanted and gestured, electricity began to spark from the tops of the columns like it had in the memory that Alexander had shown me, though it took longer to arc through the air to touch the orb. Walther laughed in delight.
"Finally!" he crowed "I can leave this cursed world and its primitives behind! Do you see Kanael? I will succeed where you had failed! I will return home, while you wander this crumbling ruin for eternity!" The bright purple light of the electricity brightened as the ropes of current to the orb thickened. The light contrasted oddly with the flickering yellow glow of my lamp.
My lamp...
I was able to move my eyes down to where the lamp sat by Alexander's head. I looked back at Walther to see him ignoring me completely as he focused on the start of the portal, so I looked back at the lamp and tried to move my hand. I wondered if this was what a quadriplegic felt like trying to move as my muscles stubbornly refused to obey the commands from my brain.
C’mon damn it. I silently urged myself on, hoping that Walther wasn’t paying any attention to my thoughts Just pick up the lamp!
My finger twitched ever so slightly, and it was a good thing the rest of my muscles were still locked in place, otherwise I would have yelled in happiness and given myself away. I still let out a mental cheer, as first my fingers, and then my entire right hand began to work free of whatever Walther had done to me.
Keep trying, Alexandra. I heard Alexander’s weak voice encouraging me, and the knowledge of how he had suffered at Walther’s hands allowed me to shift my lower arm as rage flooded through me.
C’mon, c’mon, come on! Just a little bit more! I managed to reach out and grab the lamp, but my upper arm was still ignoring me. By then I could move my head, so either I was throwing off whatever Walther had used on me, or it was wearing off on its own. Personally I like to think it was the former and not the latter.
“Yesssss,” I heard Walther hiss “Soon. Soon I will be home, and I will have my revenge on all those that wronged me, starting with that bitch, Kera. How dare she refuse me while claming that she was married! Kanael’s banishment rendered their marriage void, but she still refused me! They will pay! Oh yes, the will pay!”
I heard a low moan from Alexander at Walther’s threat, and another surge of anger was all I needed to free my arm completely and lift up the lamp.
“Hey Walther!” I shouted and when he turned to face me, I smirked at him - “Die as a human among us!” - and flung the burning lamp at him. It was like watching something in bullet time; the glass of the reservoir shattered on impact with his chest, and the burning wick ignited the spilling oil. In nanoseconds blazing oil splashed onto his clothes and skin, and he began to scream as he began to burn. Smoke rose off of him, and the orb chamber filled with the sickly sweet smell of burning flesh and the acrid stench of burning hair as he became a living torch. He flailed about the room, waving his arms frantically, screaming, as he tried to smother the flames without any success. Within a few seconds, he was ablaze from head to toe, and he ran out of the room past me and Alexander into the previous area. I watched him as ran down the hall and collapsed, silent, in the center of the room where he had stabbed Alexander two centuries before. The tall ceiling in that room acted like a chimney, drawing the smoke, heat and flames upward, and for a few moments, there was a small fire whirl, before the flames began to die down as they consumed their fuel. There was nothing else in the room to burn.
Alexandra? Alexander’s voice made me tear my attention from Walther’s burning corpse.
“Alexander?”
Thank you. I felt a cold kiss on my cheek, and I grinned widely.
“You’re welcome, Opa.” I replied, using the German word for “Grandpa”, and for a second, I could see Alexander smiling at me, before I turned to look at the orb and the columns.
“Now what?” I asked “It looks like the ritual or whatever it was, was not disrupted, and the portal is still going to open. Are you going to go home?”
Alexander sighed. (I didn’t know that ghosts could do that.) I do not know.
“You don’t know? Why don’t you know? You can see your wife again if you want. Why stay here?”
It has been a long time since I was banished. My wife my have moved on once I did not open the portal again to let her through like we had planned.
“Do you honestly believe that?” The sadness in his voice was heartbreaking.
I could not bear it if I found her with another, Alexandra.
“Well I still think you’re worrying too much, but if you don’t want to go, you can always come back with me and haunt my place. My house is old and isn’t haunted. All old houses need a ghost or two to liven things up. You could bang on walls, scare unwanted company away, and throw things at the Jehovah’s Witnesses when the come knocking at an obscenely early hour of the morning.”
He laughed. And chase away any suitor that isn’t worthy of you.
“Hey, now you’re going to far, Opa. You can scare them away if I decide they suck. Deal?”
He laughed again. I agree.
“Good, now that we’ve got that hammered out, let’s get the hell out of here. The stench is getting overpowering, and I really want a hot shower, and - what the HELL!”
The portal had opened, and I could see people on the other side. One by one they came through it and appeared in the room in the opposite version of Alexander’s journey into it. Four came through, and then the portal closed as the power to the orb died. One by one they stood up and looked at me, and then at Alexander’s body lying on the floor beside me. All four of them looked human, but I knew that only two of them actually were human. Three of them, including a woman with long white hair, rushed towards Alexander, while the forth, one of the humans with dark brown hair and bright green eyes, walked towards me. Three other three clustered around Alexander, and I could hear them whispering in Alexander's language as the fourth reached me.
"Are you all right?" he asked gently in a British accent, and my response was to practically fall into his arms, as my eyes rolled up into my head, and I fainted.
Chapter 8 -- Chapter 10
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So, what did you think of Walther/Walter? And Alexander? XD
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I SUSPECTED THAT ASSHOLE FROM THE BEGINNING. Though, the prison scheme did confuse me for a bit. I think you've been able to portray Alexander quite accurately.
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It confused the hell out of Alexandra too, that's for sure. XD I know someone out there though is going to whine about Alexander crying. To that my response will simply be: "Let's stick you in a brazen bull for a few minutes, string you up and whip the skin off your back, and THEN cut your balls and dick off, and if you don't cry, then I will change the story."
XDDD
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