THE SERPENT'S HEART ( DESCENT INTO SHADOW)

The death curse of the foul snake rang out through the monastery in ruins, every syllable tainted with the nauseatingly familiar rhythm of Vittorio's voice. Luca tensed, the resonance within him a churning, unavoidable tide, annihilating the painstakingly constructed barriers of his self. The very blood that ran in his own veins, the lineage in which he had as yet barely begun to acquaint himself, was now discovered to be a gateway to a fouled, abandoned power. "No… it cannot be," Bianca shrieked, her own face twisted in horror as she saw Luca's naked reaction. Elara's icy, calculating eyes rounded with growing horror. "The heart… it recognized him. The bloodline… it was not merely strengthening; it was… a key." The repugnant snake, its evil cunning gleaming like tapers in its eyes, an odious sense of familiarity it imparted, began to crawl up from beneath, its vast bulk churning and unspiring in a horribly graceful way. Air trembled with sheer power beneath it, a weight of ancient ill will sensed in its motion. Luca was compelled, as if by some overwhelming compulsion to capitulate, to the acknowledgment of the tie which vibrated so relentlessly within him. Things flashed through his consciousness – not traversals of remembered things, but that sense of belonging, that sickening sensation of kinship with the creature before him. "Luca, defend!" Isabella screamed, her voice a screech as she held up her arms, preparing her weapon to ward off the foul form. Her arm trembled, though, the magnitude of the horror before them too great to allow any kind of rational threat. The other wards and monks retreated, their faces contorted in terror, their ancient armor useless against this ancient animation. The serenity of the monastery was shattered, instead filled with choking islands of terror. "The prism… it stabilized the link," Bianca understood, her voice barely above a whisper. "The leader… she stabilized the link unknowingly." The filthy snake crawled across the room floor, its huge head lowering over Luca, its eye glinting, tenant-like. "Welcome, my son. The heart has waited for your return." Luca was engaged in an inner battle, a losing one between his natal humanness, his loves for Bianca and Isabella, and the beastly voice of his blood, the shocked consciousness in front of him as something being born within him. "I. I'm not your son," Luca stammered, his voice trembling, the conflict at rebellion a blight upon the flesh. The serpent's eyes slit, a flicker of something near disappointment crossing its very old eyes. "The blood remembers, child. You cannot deny your heritage." Elara fled ere horror could take more tangible hold. She flung a hail of stones etched with love at the snake with a shout of words of long ago. The stones glowed with soft, ethereal light, the residue of the prism's power. The snake hissed and drew back, ancient power giving it evident pain. "Meddling guardians! You will not stand against the tide of destiny!" The distraction had cost them precious seconds. "Luca, we need to get out of here!" Bianca screamed, pulling on his arm. But Luca stood stock-still, his gaze fixed on the shape of the monster, the battle raging within him. The temptation was so powerful, a siren call of power, of belonging, of being part of something so huge and so ancient. "He's… he's in my head," Luca gasped, hands pressed over his forehead. "His voice… it's like… my own mind, twisted, echoed." We can't save him here!" Dante shouted, already sprinting for the destroyed doorway. "We have to work out how to sever this link, how to discover what this. abomination. is." Bianca and Isabella pulled with all their might, Luca falling towards the empty space of the monastery floor, the enraged roaring of the serpent echoing behind them. Jumping from above in the dark was a leap of despair into the unknown. They had negotiated a prehistoric tunnel system beneath the monastery, air thick with the smell of damp and forgotten years. The nightmare snake's presence still lingered in their minds, the biting reality of its colossal power. "Whatever that. thing was," Isabella shuddered. Elara, her stony face appearing to scowl, answered with a prohibiting sureness. "The roots of the Serpent's Eye's origin. A man of the world's creation, bound to this line for things we've only just started not to even suspect. Vittorio. not even an acolyte; a vessel, and maybe even unwitting." The realization was terrifying. Vittorio's hardness, his greed, weren't his. They belonged to this creature of old, echoing down his bloodline. And now the creature gazed at Luca, at the new heir. "The bloom… the web of relationships," Bianca realized, reeling. "It was a way of preparing for the awakening of the heart, to conserve energy for it to come." Their passage through the tunnels was treacherous, the debris that had been blown apart waiting to crush them. The psychic equivalent of the snake-like monster was a crushing pressure, a psychic pounding grinding away at their will. They finally came to a hidden valley, the desolate wasteland providing temporary respite. But the obscene presence was in Luca's mind, a perverse rapport that was fated to consume him. We have to break this connection, Luca," Elara urged. "Before it's too late." "How?" Luca swallowed, the snake voice a tormenting whisper in his head. "It feels. part of me." They explained to him that the crystal prism, broken or not, held latent energy, an anti-note to the Serpent's heart. If they could retrieve the fragments and recite a certain incantation, they could possibly break the link. Their frantic search led them to other secret monasteries and ancient ruins, each of which contained pieces of the broken prism, all of which were guarded by pieces of the original guard or new initiates to the Serpent heart who had been roused. Each piece they discovered ramped up the psychic pressure on Luca, the serpent's voice more urgent, more persuasive, with unimaginable power if only he would seize his birthright. The final shard of the prism lay in a subterranean temple, the fortress of the devotees of the new Serpent, in the hands of those openly demonstrating awe-inspiringly enhanced abilities, direct conduits of the power of the opened heart. The temple had been shattered in a final desperate attempt, a fierce last defense against impossible odds. Luca was fighting not just the acolytes, but the poisonous presence of the snake within his mind, the whispering voices that were waiting to turn him against his friends. Inside the temple, in the very center there where they had gotten the last piece of the prism, they were knocked onto their knees by a figure – resurrected Alessandro, whose eyes now poured out the same dark energy of evil as had that evil serpent, whose will now was totally at the control of its ancient power. "Welcome, brother," the voice was with the same dirty tone as that of the serpent. "The heart awaits." Their final battle awaited them, not only against the reawakened Serpent's heart and the cult of fanatics who worshiped it, but against the bitter remnants of their own people, and the final nightmare of Luca's own flesh. Surgery was their sole hope to try, a desperate race against time to shatter the cycle which would terrorize their world forever.