~~~~~~~~~~

 

I dashed around the dark church, hugging the walls, and clutching my camping knife. 

 

In front of the church, the raiders that were still standing were slowly encircling my Lucy.  She limped backward, one leg bleeding freely leaving a dark pool before her. Her ears laid flat against her head, as she hit the walls of the church, and raised her fists like a boxer on the ropes. 

 

Wally lay before the doors, bloody and insensate. Hopefully not—. 

 

I stopped the thought, viciously.

 

A spear wielder made a lunge for Lucy, but she bobbed around the jagged tip, even with her injury, catching the half of the spear, twisting it, and sending the slaver to his ass in the square. A sharp crack to the face laid him out, but she wasn’t able to follow up, with the rest closing in. 

 

Several other slavers were on the ground with broken legs, or knocked out cold or dead for all I knew. 

 

Judging by the injuries many of them sported, the blood on Lucy’s hands and feet was at least not all hers. 

 

But the leader was twirling up his whip, with casual disdain. 

 

Clearly, she’d done amazing against the minions. More than I could’ve possibly hoped for, given that I was Level one and her power was linked to mine.

 

But he was too much. 

 

“Enough games! You two! Get these doors open!” The leader barked. Two slavers broke away from the enclosing circle and rushed at the doors, hacking away at them with their axes. 

 

“This one looks valuable, Max!” Said one from the circle, the one nursing a bloody jaw from Lucy’s counter attack, now back on his feet. 

 

“That’s someone’s Familiar, idiot! Think those ears are a costume piece!?” Said the Leader, who was evidently called Max. “It’s just a beast. Dispose of it!” 

 

Spear idiot scowled, grumbling. But the rest took the cue and attacked Lucy in earnest. Together, they overwhelmed her. She bobbed and weaved, and dealt many a devastating kick to knees and heads. But there were half a dozen of them. 

 

She took a blade to the side crying out in pain, only for a club to crash into her shoulder with a sickening crunch, audible all the way to my hiding place. 

 

Her anguished cry was too much for me. 

 

It superseded my fear, my panic, my indecision and dread of making the situation worse. 

 

I was in the square casting my healing skill on Lucy without a single decision happening in my brain. 

 

[Paramore's mending] 

 

A stream of golden sparks rushed from me to Lucy, gradually turning the same Verdant green as her summoning circle as they suffused her, orbiting her injuries, and soothing her cries. 

 

Slavers turned in panic, demonstrating the usual discipline of a gang of people attacking one injured person. Suddenly finding many of her injuries patched, if not completely healed, she instantly took advantage and laid about herself in a tornado of violent fury. 

 

The reservoir of pleasure that I had built up with Lucy was practically empty. Her injuries had been grave. 

 

I needed to— 

 

I hit the front door of the church before I realized I’d moved. The impact stole the wind from my chest. I coughed, head pounding and ear ringing. A searing line of pain from my left hip to my right shoulder began. The pain steadily grew until it felt like someone had poured molten lead across my torso. 

 

Dazed, I clutched at my chest. It was soaking wet. I looked in confusion at my bright red hand. 

 

“EIR!!” Someone screamed my name in terror. 

 

I turned, and saw Lucy, desperately fighting towards me. She too was covered in blood. Minor wounds of every description marred her beautiful body. Yet she fought towards me with a ferocity and desperation that stirred something deep and primal inside me. 

 

I reached out to her. 

 

“Eir!! Hold on!!” She screamed. 

 

“Lucy!” I said. 

 

I cast [Paramore's mending] on her again. 

 

A thinner stream of golden sparks rushed towards her from my outstretched hand. 

 

A whip cracked. 

 

Lucy, and four of the slavers trying to fight her, vanished in a torrential spatter of blood that painted the church wall red.

 

A shower of Verdant green light evaporated from the wall, as I felt my summon break, and my Familiar returned to the astral expanse. 

 

I stared, uncomprehending. 

 

With no target, my healing spell fizzled, evaporating like sparks from a campfire. 

 

“Enough.” Said the Leader. 

 

He was whirling his whip around himself in a complex pattern, too fast for my eyes to track. 

 

His eyes glowed, and magic pulsed around him, so intense that I could feel it, like static electricity rippling in the air. 

 

The tip of the whip grew hot and red. 

 

I watched in horror as the blood from the wall started dripping down. Then running. Then pouring. It rushed down to Max’s feet in a thick, sloshing pool and rose up. 

 

I felt a sick similarity between this and how Lucy always formed out of light. 

 

But that was beautiful. This was sick. 

 

The blood of his men rapidly flowed up into a monstrous form. 

 

Dozens of terribly human hands attached to long arms with too many elbows, bristled from a single, grotesquely enlarged torso. 

 

The blood congealed, then dried rapidly into muscles and bone. 

 

Skinless, the abomination dropped to the flagstones. 

 

“There.” said Max, in deep satisfaction. 

 

He gazed upon the horror he’d created with rapturous delight. Glee. Worship. 

 

“Behold, my power!” He screamed. “ETERNITY!!”

 

The surviving slavers dropped to the ground, prostrating themselves before their leader. 

 

“Praise! Praise! Praise!” They shouted. And then again. And again. 

 

“I have come to tear down this false temple, and bless the people of this forsaken place with glory!” Max screamed. He looked deranged. Mouth wild like a howl, he laughed into the sky. 

 

“Break open this tomb!” Max screamed.

 

Then the ten foot tall abomination scuttled forward with horrifying speed, its many limbs working in disgustingly inhuman ways to hurl itself to its task. 

 

A cold, dead hand brushed me aside. I went flying and crashed into the dirt of the cemetery, beside the church, narrowly missing breaking my skull open on a marker stone. But I felt my ribs crunch.

 

Thunderous cracks and glass breaking and chanting and screaming laughter. 

 

My consciousness fluttered. 

 

Terrible crashing sounds, like the inside of the church of the architect was a blender. 

 

I reawakened to the abomination smashing its way out of a huge hole where the door had once been. In its many hands, the dozen people that had stayed behind, so that the others could flee. 

 

I must’ve propped myself up against a tombstone. But when I tried to stand, my legs wouldn’t respond. They were limp and oddly numb. Something in my back felt profoundly wrong. 

 

The abomination had Wally in its hands, a hand wrapped around each limb, and one over his head. 

 

Max was screaming at Wally. “WHERE IS SHE?”

 

His voice sounded like I was underwater.

 

That wasn’t right. My confused brain turned over. Where is she? Who were they looking for? Shouldn’t he be asking ‘where are they’?

 

Wally just smiled, a bloody, defiant smile. 

 

He said something. 

 

Max stopped screaming. 

 

One of the elders spoke. But it was too far, the ringing in my ear too loud. 

 

Max struck Wally with the back of his fist. And again. And again. 

 

I could see Wally speaking, blood pouring from his mouth. 

 

Max screamed in his face, his spit flying.

 

Wally just kept speaking calmly. 

 

I tried to focus. I wanted to hear what he was saying. If I could just–

 

With a wet squelch, the abomination’s hand crushed Wally’s head. 

 

I couldn’t look away. I felt myself scream, but it came out as a bloody, bubbling gurgle. 

 

No.

 

One by one, its terribly strong hands did the same to each of the elders. It turned them, holding them like puppets and made them watch. 

 

They died in silence. 

 

Max screamed rage and frustration at the night. 

 

I was reeling. I felt like gravity had ended and I was hurtling into the endless black sky. 

 

My whole life, even without my parents, I had never really felt alone. 

 

I heard incoherent sobbing, confused sounds coming out of myself. 

 

I registered Max’s head turn to me. His lips moved. His eyes lit up in dawning realization. Then a sickening, greedy light lit in his eyes. 

 

The mass of arms turned toward me. 

 

The chanting resumed. 

 

Thundering steps. 

 

I watched it numbly. 

 

Let this be over. Let me end. Let anything, not to have to face what just happened. No more. 

 

A blue portal opened in front of me. 

 

Grace Valant marched out, tall and grey haired. A bureaucratic grey suit, tailored to within an inch of its life, framed her form. Her deep facial scars gave her a haunted look in the dim light. 

 

“You are hereby expe—“ she started. 

 

Then she looked down and caught sight of me. Her nostrils flared. 

 

The portal snapped shut, leaving us in darkness. 

 

She made a slow deliberate circle, turning and taking in the situation like she was the dish of a radar apparatus. 

 

Then she turned back to me, knelt at my side, and was pressing a cold vial of something to my lips. 

 

“Drink.” She said. “All of it.” 

 

I shook my head. I didn’t want any of this. I couldn’t bear the aching in my heart. The terrible gaping emptiness in it. Consuming, ravenous merciless emptiness. 

 

“Drink.” Grace insisted, holding my chin and pouring the potion into my mouth, then holding my lips closed. 

 

I had little choice. I swallowed. Emotions were rocketing past me and through me like bullets, piercing and leaving, shredding me until there was nothing left. 

 

I slumped. Merciful oblivion opened to me, and I leapt with open arms. 

 

~~~~~~~~~~~

 

Grace stood from her new student’s side, certain that the remarkable young woman’s body, at least, was out of harm's reach. Though, she’d suffered terrible wounds. Grace wasn’t sure how the girl had remained conscious so long. 

 

She eyed the cultists. 

 

The leader had been shouting at her for some time. The usual about purification, and cleansing, and demanding surrender or service. 

 

Grace hadn’t listened. He was yet another Night Blessed. A blood smith, by the looks of it. His words meant nothing. Yet. That would come later. 

 

But how had they come? How had they known about the Herald? Had the girl told someone?

 

Too many questions.

 

She opened a small portal, reached through, and then stepped back, sliding her long sword, Reminiscence, from its scabbard. The weapon was as long as Grace was tall, its hand width blade seeming narrow only compared to its cold length. Its straight, glittering blade pointed briskly at each cultist and the blood-forged in turn. 

 

[Challenge] 

 

One by one, each of them made their choice. Fight or flight. 

 

Most of the cultists ran, and were immediately crippled by the mind shattering fear and debilitating weakness of her coward debuff. Two died as their hearts stopped. The rest collapsed, less than a step taken away. 

 

The leader was screaming and pointing at her. 

 

As if his followers didn’t know where the threat was. Up to the usual intellectual standard she’d come to expect, then. 

 

Night Blessed. Heralds. The strange changes in the depths of the Dungeon. 

 

Grace let out a slow stream of breath.

 

Puzzle later. Violence now. 

 

The charging blood-forged finally came within the arc of her sword. 

 

She flicked her wrist into Gillion’s Folly, and the sword Reminiscence was buried in the revolting abomination. 

 

A circular flourish of Heavenly Sparrows. 

 

The carved ribbons of the Bloodforged streaked through the air, raining in a semicircle around Grace with a spatter. 

 

A second wrist flick, and Reminiscence was clean again. 

 

Grace strode toward the leader, unhurried. 

 

Blade tip forward and down, stirring the air in the tranquil wafting of Wise Crane.

 

They stood in the architect’s square, before the ruined church. 

 

“I’m going to eat you, and turn your blood into—“ 

 

Grace filtered him out. His words had no meaning yet. 

 

His writhing whip lashed out from a dozen directions, each slash causing thunderclap booms and cracking the stones beneath their feet. A stray blow shattered a decorative stone column. Another a wood beam wider than the length of her sword. 

 

Flick, flick. Raven’s Gambit, Lesser Pebble. 

 

The pieces of the whip went flying. The arms that had wielded it, shortly thereafter. 

 

Grace lifted the sword tip to the leader’s throat. 

 

[Judgement] 

 

The cultist fell silent at last, as the weight of her skill crashed down on him. 

 

“Now, we may converse.” She said. 

 

Half a dozen cultists strolled up from between two buildings. Their happy chatter fell silent as they saw their leader, bleeding, on his knees. A line of villagers strung together with ropes trudged in their wake, eyes hollowed and hopeless.

 

[Challenge] 

 

As one, the cultists turned their backs to flee, and died. 

 

Grace returned her attention to the leader. 

 

“You shall receive judgement.” She said. 

 

She paused. 

 

He stared, wide eyed. He trembled. His face was full of fear, hatred, and awe. 

 

“When I speak the truth, you will nod. When I lie, you will shake your head.” Grace spoke, calmly. “Fail, and you will receive [Mercy]. Speak, and you will receive [Mercy]. You understand.” 

 

Just in time, he nodded frantically. 

 

“Let us begin.”