Oh, you’ve got so much to tell me, Jack swallowed. But so little time.

“Where’s the urn?”

“In the grips of Everia,” Helen responded. “The urn is not what you’re looking for. You’re looking for commands in the tongue of the death. If you paid attention, you would’ve seen them everywhere, Jack.”

“Yeah… where the hell are those commands?!” Jack said. “And why are you like the Keeper?! Why do you know my name?!”

“I wish I could explain, but you see, Everia is right around the corner and poor old Hunter will fail to fight it off. He’ll lose all of his powers while his friends and masters will be banished to the prairie. Want to know more? The Hall of Ceremony will become nothing more than a home for Everia where it’ll build and scheme, hoping to break out and break everything in existence. Though, a few decades later, a familiar mercenary will stumble upon it for… an interesting reason.”

“Stop wasting my time by telling stories!” Jack became more and more frantic. “Where are those commands?!”

The white void was closer than ever, having engulfed Hunter and all the powers who’d charged into the battle. Now, Jack couldn’t be certain of what it was. Was it really the vision or was it Everia? He also couldn’t think about it as only he, Helen and a tiny area remained.

“That Keeper didn’t mislead you. The commands are here.”

“Where here? This place is--”

“Getting smaller by the second. Go ahead and find it yourself. You can’t expect someone more powerful than you to fix all your problems.”

Jack checked every corner and tiny shadow.

There’s nothing here! he thought in frustration which was made many times worse by Helen’s stare. Stone walls, stone floors, stone chairs and a huge nexus in the middle. I’m not seeing inscriptions or slips of paper anywhere.

Then, Jack stopped in his track, slid across the floor and turned to Helen wide eyed.

She grinned.

Jack jumped, but the woman disappeared and reappeared a few feet to the side. He growled and jumped again. This time, she rolled out of his way.

“What’s the matter?”

“Just stop it already! We don’t have any time!” Jack pointed at the void barely a dozen feet away.

“I don’t know about you, but I have a thousand years.”

No matter how fast Jack went, she always got out of the way. He flew into a fit of rage and hopelessness then flipped open Hunter’s journal and landed on the dictionary of the tongue of death.

“Cora isimasu coragyu corati!” he read the first phrase his eyes landed upon. Thou soul shall burn like those deceived by you.

Helen screamed. Jack repeated the words and darted towards her, touching her hand.

He felt weightless and cold deep inside. Winding lines of light started to glow on Helen’s forearm and moved onto Jack.

“Yes,” he wanted to should, but an invisible force shot him into the white void and drained all the air from his lungs.

A cackle sounded in the mix of light and chaos.

Jack stopped in time in the whiteness. He had every moment existence had to think it all through and to put everything into place. A little force appeared above him and started to push him into a tiny dark hole below. He didn’t worry -- the vision came to an end as his he left the whiteness.

He couldn’t comprehend the scale of the things that happening all around him, but he could feel history and existence itself being changed.

Jack’s vision reappeared, the world around him blurry. He struggled to catch a breath then focusing his eyes.

“I got it!” he said.

“You got it? You got it!” the old man said and gestured. “Give it to me! Now!”

“I don’t have a thing to--”

Hunter raised his revolver. Growling, Jack slapped the gun out of the way, then hurried to pull up his sleeve, revealing a winding tattoo.

“Oh… good.”

***

Jack pointed Hunter’s revolver with his left while keeping his right steady in front of hm.

“Sure, sure… Hold them back!” Hunter ordered, taking the yellowed piece of paper and the arrow out of his pocket. “Soon, we’ll be getting the urn. Soon, we’ll be reaching the Heart.”

“Why did you have to lie to me? Once you bound me with the Gunpowder of the Deal? Once we made equal sacrifices?”

“If you knew, you wouldn’t have followed me and died.”

“Or did you lie because you’re afraid to repeat what happened to Helen?”

I’m pretty sure I can understand what’s going on… Though I wouldn’t have even believed what happened if I heard about it once I gave my blood to the Gunpowder of the Deal.

Hunter’s face turned sideways at the words while behind him, out of the mist and the black water, Everia’s servants emerged.

“Enough!” Hunter roared. “We’ll fight later. Now we fight them.” He began reading the first command and Jack fired the first bullet.

***

The gun thundered and wisps of crimson dust rose.

Jack pulled the trigger again, the revolver clicked and he cursed.

“Out of bullets!” You better read faster.

Hunter glanced at him, frowning, looked at the waves of Everia’s servants coming in around them and gestured at his pocket.

Jack searched inside until he gripped a revolver cylinder shaped object and took it out.

Hunter turned Jack’s arm around, continuing to read the winding words of the command.

Jack bit the round bullet clip with his mouth and emptied the shells out of the revolver. One by one, he took the bullets from the clip and slid them into the revolver, spat the empty clip out and clenched his fists from the awful taste of gunpowder.

A few deadmen had made it past the crystals of the island.

Jack fired the revolver.

Three bullets pierced the deads, they tripped and fell on the crystals. Wisps of red dust arose and mixed with the white auras swirling around.

Jack turned to another who’d come close from another direction and started to fire. Two bullets shattered its knees and one hit its thigh. Jack pulled the trigger again. The revolver clicked.

It’s already out again?! he groaned. Hundreds of them are coming after us! How am I supposed to take them all down with six bullets?!

They’re gonna get to us before he finishes reading those commands!

An idea came to him and he closed his eyes, trying to remember.

“Vanish from this plain of existencei!”

In an instant, dozens of corrupted deads were evaporated. Jack grinned and shouted the words again. More crimson dust swirled in the air, but less deadmen disappeared.

So that’s curses’ weakness, he thought. The amount of damage a single one does diminishes.

“...summon you!”” Hunter dropped Jack’s arm. In front of them, one of the three cups’ altars disappeared.

The old man grabbed the yellowed slip of paper. “Sure, sure… I can already feel the urn in my grip! Just hold them for a minute, no longer!”

Jack did as said, running around the tiny island slashing the deads and repeating the curses in the tongue of death.

Behind him, The second altar faded into dust.

Hunter started reading the last command off the arrow, but stuttered in the middle. As his words stopped, the last remaining altar spun and shook.

A tentacle of white smoke grabbed Jack’s leg and he fell face first into the ground, blood shooting out of his nose. He tried to grab onto something, but the smoke quickly dragged him towards the sharp crystals around the shore. He rammed his feet on them, fighting the pull and the pain, then grabbed his satchel.

“Urassen imu cora!” he shouted words the he’d scribbled on the back of his notes. Hunter had spoken them fighting the priest at the church.

All the deadmen turned into deflated balloons and went limp while the aura around Jack’s leg disappeared.

Hunter chucked the arrow at one of the deadmen who somehow survived as the last altar burst into flames. The old man stepped away from it and gestured for Jack to move beside him.

The last ash rained to the ground and the ground started to...waver. Jack let out a whoa as he tried balancing and not stabbing himself on the crystals. Then, he looked down. The world stopped moving.

Everia or the Hall of Ceremony playing with my mind once more.

Particles rose from the ground where the altars had stood and started forming a spinning ring. Chunks of dirt came up and entered the mix. Crystals shattered and their shards rose. In the middle of the floating circle of rubble, lights flashed and blackness appeared.

“Sure, sure… This isn’t what I expected,” Hunter said.

“You hoped the urn would just come into your hands?”

“I did, but I guess a portal to it will work too...I haven’t seen a real one in countless years anyway.” He stepped forward, stopping inches from the ominous thing, overlooked it whole, breathed deeply and vanished.

Jack backed off and stared for a moment as more and more rubble joined the floating ring.

I hope this experience with portals is better than the last one, he stepped in as well.