“If you haven’t registered your land, it’s not yours.”
“Gods above, you’re Antrian aren’t you. Such a damned Antrian attitude. You know what? Your laws aren’t valid here. This is the jungle, the wild, untamed wilderness. The law of the land is you take it, it’s yours as long as you can hold it.”
“Are you holding it?”
“You’re damned right I am.”
“Wait.” Lea put her arm on Ani’s shoulder and walked around her. “Who are you?”
“Just a priest of Emiaroth doing her god’s bidding. We require solitude to properly worship our god.”
Emiaroth. That’s no god I’ve ever heard o— Dear gods, she’s a demon priest. She glanced behind the woman and saw a sizable alter black with ash, charred many times over. A large chimney shot up over it, letting smoke out and clean air in. “You require solitude for your sacrifices, you mean.”
“I worship my lord as it pleases him, which occasionally falls out of society’s norms. Isolation helps with that.”
“That’s why this village is gone, isn’t it? You’re a damned cultist. You dragged people from their homes to the middle of nowhere and killed them in the name of a false god. For a pawn in one of the gods’ armies. Hell, he may not even exist!” Immediately, Ani wished she could reach out and take her words back.
“Oh? Is that so? I just worship a false god? A peon? A hallucination? Then explain how when the gods abandoned me, and how Emiaroth gave me strength and power! Explain how Emiaroth’s followers all joined me to the world’s end and built this village for him, from his power. Explain this!” Suddenly, the priest’s hands were up and glowing a deep black like an otherworldly shadow emanating from her open palms. Her fingers were outstretched and shaking subtly when thin black tentacles shot across the room and into Ani’s chest.
Everything started to slow down for her. She saw a bolt glance off the priests’ hastily-cast arcane shield and the subsequent mad dash the Chief made without his crossbow forward as one of the priest’s hands rotated and turned palm up, then started to raise it. In line with the rising hand, she felt her own body rise, noticing the palms both glowing a thick, harsh black. Her throat began to close up as she felt a dark tugging deep within her. Something deep inside wanted out, wanted to be free. Something told her it would be a bad idea to oblige it.
The rising hand suddenly clenched into a fist, and she felt her throat close and a squeezing on her heart. Funny. She’d never felt her heart before. It just sat there. For three hundred forty turns it sat there, beating, pumping blood, keeping her moving, breathing, living. Now, floating half a meter off the ground, the air itself seeming to pick her up by the trachea, she finally felt her heart. It hurt. Something was closing in around it, like a hand grabbing at it and squeezing.
She stopped breathing. The color from the world seemed to fade away as darkness began to overtake her. Is this the end? I came this far, only to be ended by a random priest in a dark castle in the middle of nowhere?
No. Fuck that. I have places to be, people to know, a sister to watch grow into a woman people would talk about in history books for eras to come. I’m not letting some demon priest fucking end me.
As her eyes opened wide, she looked across the room at the woman suspending her in the air, so far away yet so close. The Chief was finally on her, though his weapon wasn’t drawn. The sword was firmly on his back, but he kept charging. What is he doing?
Despite the distance, she watched in vivid, excruciating detail as the massive golem shoved his metal hand into the chest cavity of the demon priest. Her robes tore away, skin peeled, and blood showered the scene. As the Chief’s hand planted itself firmly in the priest, she felt a striking pain as the woman’s off-hand flashed a bright black. What an oxymoron. Fuckin’ magic.
Bright yellow tendrils wrapped around the demon priest, but with the Chief’s hand in the priest’s chest, the tendrils seemed to confuse the golem for part of the priest and enveloped both. Just as suddenly as they arrived, they were gone, along with both figures.
The pain in her chest tightened, a deep-rooted pain took hold, and quite suddenly, darkness took her. Her sight went first, then hearing, then smell, then taste. In pure darkness, she felt the air tight around her throat and an invisible force tight on her heart. It was squeezing harder. Harder. Harder. The pain shot through her one more time, enough to drop her if she wasn’t floating. Suddenly, the force around her throat dissipated. She was falling now; she could feel it. Then, the last thing she could feel, the pain deep within her chest, faded. She felt absolutely nothing.
Chapter 35: Hope Not Ever to See Heaven
The Greater Plane of Ik'Thar
Quite suddenly, interrupting a long-lasting tranquil scene of inaction, a pitch black suit of armor with arguably needless ram horns and decidedly superfluous spikes appeared in a large ravine. Above him stretched walls of rock towering into infinity, below him dropped a farther distance than he had ever perceived, ending in what appeared to be a river of molten lava.
He found himself on a bridge, skinny and stretching across the valley with caves at either side. Other similar land-bridges could be seen both lower and higher either way down the ravine. Above all these oddities, the strangest yet was that this Construct came with a woman seemingly attached at the end of his arm. This skinny bronze woman with sawn-off horns on both her temples robed in red and gold was dangling off the side of the bridge, held up by the golem’s hand resting inside her chest cavity.
Sense came to the bewildered golem as he remembered the events leading up to this. During the attack, he figured, the stunned priest must have inadvertently launched her planned escape spell, which accidentally enveloped him as it read the two as one body, the opposite of the Chief’s intention, which was to cut off the spell entirely.
Now, in another dimension beyond his knowledge, the Chief stood holding a crazed priest over a river of lava in what he could only assume was one of the godly realms. Ever a sucker for the dramatic, he found himself unable to resist.
“How convenient. A woman brings herself to hell, a favor to her killer.”
With a swift motion, he ripped his hand out of the priest’s chest, causing her to fall a great distance, eventually splashing into the lava. Assumedly, anyway, as the Chief lost interest before he could confirm. Shortly after the descent of the woman began, he tossed the heart down as well.
Now, left in an undoubtedly hot, arid environment which appeared to be a decidedly unpleasant afterlife, the Chief was left with a choice. He could take the cave to his left, which seemed to stretch into oblivion, or the cave to his right, equally endless.
Before a choice could be made, a strange figure dropped from the sky. If not for his expertly tuned reflexes, he perhaps would have found himself decapitated, a thought displeasing to the Chief.
As he leaped into a battle stance, ridiculously-large claymore in hand, he took in the fellow before him. The creature appeared as a man in full plate mail, complete with bucket helm, a mohawk of feathers, and metal covering every bit of his body. He held two identical weapons, one in each hand. One would not call them sickles, nor scythes, but more of a hybrid. They shared the bent handles and blades of a scythe, but were slightly larger than a sickle, almost as though a mini-scythe.
The surprise to the Chief was in the creature’s motif. Despite the apparent theme of this afterlife, both the weapons and its entire armor set, including the “feathers” were made of pure ice. If not ice, something semi-translucent yet foggy and a pale turquoise color.
“Who stands before The Chief with a Soul of Obsidian Who Gambles in the Mansion of Desire?”
“One with shorter titles than you, apparently.” The figure sprung at him, scythes ready to cleave. His claymore already in hand and down, the Chief swung up, caught the blades, and narrowly blocked their trajectory, and p
romptly kicked the armored figure back.
“Where might this place be?”
“A lost traveler, have we. How sad, to die lost and alone.”
Again, they lunged, only to be blocked by the ridiculous sword.
“The Chief is not alone, as he finds himself with a battle partner.”
“I am no partner, Chief, and this is no mansion of desire. Your gamble with me is in vain. Shall I see if your soul is truly made of obsidian?” They swung to carve out his chest, to which the Chief blocked with his off hand. Now dueling with his sword one-handed and an open-fist off-handed, the two exchanged blows, each sidling along the precarious bridge.
“One is skilled in combat.”
“As are you, Mansion-Gambler. If you think this changes the fight, know it does not.”
“Why does it not, soldier of ice,” the Chief replied while parrying a series of blows.
“It can’t, Kora. My job, my existence, depends on it.”
“What life depends on battle with otherworldly beings, knight of sickles?”
“The life of an archon, mortal-made warrior.”
“So the Chief truly finds himself in the realm of gods?”
“A god, to be specific.”
“Feel free to be, frozen angel. Which god is it?”
“The Lord Commander Ik’Thar, soul-forged.” A swing of a scythe nearly cut through his helm, causing him to leap back, taking a defensive stance.
“Curious. How might the Chief find himself a safe passage to the mortal realm once more?”
“You don’t, my world-weary traveler. The godly realms have one-way tickets.” As the figure leapt at the Chief, he parried the archon mid-air and nearly threw them off the bridge, though the scythes caught on the edge, allowing them to whip up around the underside of the bridge and to their feet. While their weapons fell into the ravine, two new ones molded out of their hands.
“The Chief’s existence upon the plane of Ik’Thar is accidental, warrior of the gods. A woman, assumedly a worshipper of one of the lords of this realm, exorcised herself and the Chief to this very bridge.”
“That is so very unfortunate for you, man of trees and ore.” As the Chief stepped to swing, the archon responded with a flurry of slashes, few of which the Chief failed to dodge.
“Why does the angel of Ik’Thar fight the Chief?”
“As I said, child of man, it is my duty. I am the arbiter of lost souls, a reaper of sorts. I find misplaced folks upon our plane and judge them.”
“Then what, if the question may be asked, might the judgment of the Chief be?”
“Death, most obviously, as that is the goal for which I seek.” As another flurry began, the Chief pulled off a leg sweep catching the plated figure entirely off-guard, leaving a sword buried in their spine and a foot upon their helm.
“A goal which one has failed to attain.”
“Death works in funny ways in the realm of archons, mortal construct.” Their arms swept forward and caught his leg, sweeping the Chief onto his back. As he found his balance once more, the archon’s crushed helm reconstituted to form and their posture seemed entirely unaffected.
“Can a man die in the realm of the dead?”
“Realm of the dead? You, my misplaced migrant, have a very poor understanding of the godly realms.” Another lunge allowed the Chief to flip above his opponent, launch off the back of their helm, and tumble, obtaining his broadsword as he landed, quickly righting himself into another defensive stance.
“It is the understanding of the mortals that the godly realms act as housing for the souls of the dead.”
“Foolish man of steel, we trifle not in the affairs of mortals where it need not affect us. Death is permanent, and souls are lost in the throes of waned life.” A flurry of blades was suddenly in his face, inspiring an instant retreat back. Any other man would have lost their balance and fallen.
“Dead men remain dead?”
“There is no life after death, Chief of the Obsidian Soul.”
“Then what purpose serves the godly realms, arbiter of the forsaken?”
“Why hubris and ego, unlearned golem of man. The gods are victims of narcissism, something any holder of power would easily fall victim to. The realms are monuments to their sheer might. The massive cities hold no purpose but to inspire awe and to house their excessive armies.”
“Do the gods war, winter soldier?”
“Not with my lord, no. The Commander holds the largest army of them all, meaning the other lords of the heavenly realms know where to not lay siege. A war has not occurred between the sitting gods in many thousands of moons.”
“Sitting gods? Does the reaper of pilgrims imply past heavenly bodies?”
“You mortals truly know nothing beyond your own pitiful realm, do you?”
Twin blades knocked him back, the backs of the blades slamming at his throat.
“A man is a skilled opponent worthy of honor, judge of Ik’Thar.”
“Indeed, you as well, Chief of the Mansion. Skilled for a mortal.”
“Is there need for such violence, archon? We seem evenly matched.”
“We do, Kora, though my job is not completed until your life energy has been severed.”
“Must the Chief’s life be taken? Would an escort to the mortal realm not fulfill one’s job? The life of the Chief would not be lost, but the quandary of the misplaced nomad would indeed be solved, would it not?”
The plate-mailed figure paused a short time. “You bring up a good point, Construct. Seeing as battle has progressed so far already, any other would be dead. Consider yourself proven.”
“A proper introduction is necessary.” The pitch-black Construct held out his spiked gauntlet. “The Chief with a Soul of Obsidian Who Gambles in the Mansion of Desire.”
In response, the archon’s armor melted away, revealing a Northman’s skeleton made of pure ice. With an outstretched hand, almost claw-like, they shook the Chief’s hand. “I am known as Zrarik. Consider me your guide through this particular hell.”
Chapter 36: Quickly She's Subdued
The City of Arghan'Sul, Ghostfire Prefecture
With all the newfound room of her ever-so-slightly-more hospitable cage, Osa had taken it upon herself to put the space to good use. With a general lack of other activities, she found herself either reading, working out in the limited capacity she had, or sitting. She spent quite a bit of time coiled in the corner, relaxing, sometimes introspecting, sometimes napping, commonly simply lost in random thought.
She was, at the moment, partaking in some pushups, another thing that felt good to do more than for just half a cent per dess in the yard. With all the extra room, she had the space to stretch out and do some real pushups. Her yard time was usually spent moving around as much as possible, as she couldn’t run in a room. Suddenly, her door swung open and a familiar star-laden woman was tossed in.
“You’re lucky we’re not throwin’ you in solitary, little lady.”
“I didn’t know what he was doing! He just grabbed me and ported!”
“We heard you the first time. You’re lucky the warden bought your story.”
The door slammed behind her, and she simply laid there on the floor, possibly crying, possibly just lacking the motivation to get up or move at all. Osa took it upon herself help her up, so she coiled up from the pushup and gave her a hand, to which her cellmate initially recoiled, but then accepted.
“Gods. I don’t think I’ll ever get used to... Oh shit. I’m sorry, that was totally not cool.”
“It’s fine... What’s your name again?”
“Arianrhod. Call me Rhod.”
Osa nodded. “You aren’t used to my kind up here, Northie. We like it south where it’s warm.”
“Why w
ere you up here anyway?”
“By the blade, not a sleep into this and not only has my roommate already escaped and been caught, and now we’re to the ‘so, why’re you in’ part?”
“I didn’t escape! Well, not intentionally...”
“You were busted out?”
“Yeah. Old buddy of mine got me out, but I told him I needed to be here, so I let myself get caught.”
“Spend another few sleeps here, you’ll wish you’d stayed out.”
“I fucked up. I need to show penance.”
“Show what now?”
“Show... that I did something wrong.”
“Aw, we have one that believes in the ‘system.’ How cute. What’d you do? Steal an apple?”
“Accidentally killed a good friend of mine on stage.”
Rhod sat onto the bed and stared at her knees while Osa looked curiously at her. “Truthly, I didn’t expect that.”
“Didn’t they tell you my charges when we were paired up?”
“Yeah, I think, and I’m guessing I didn’t listen.”
“Fair enough. Yeah, I... basically accidentally used a pretty rough dose of death magic on a woman when I was trying to use shadow. My final project in the academy was to show that I could use shadow magic to physically move things, that shadow isn’t just an absence of light but a real force. Unfortunately, I proved that exact thing with death magic. I killed her in the process.”
“Well shit. Remind me not to mess with you.”
She forced a smirk. “Yeah.” Osa moved a little closer to her and brought her torso down to Rhod’s level.
“Well, if it makes you feel any better, I’m here for a helluva lot worse reason than that.”
“Actually, no, that doesn’t make me feel better at all.”
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