Chapter 11

The Holy City

The Priests Mansion

 

“Down the hallway, break the painting and go down the staircase!” I shouted directions brought to me by a faceless woman wearing a maids outfit, to the masked figures running along with me. 

 

They were professionals and didn’t stop to ask questions, using their own magic and talents to confirm and pass on information to each other. They treated me like I wasn’t anything more than a map but that was fine. We weren’t friends and barely were allies, we just had the same end goal here.  

 

I turned a corner and stumbled for a second when I heard the Old Man’s howl ring out more violently than I’d ever heard it before, it wasn’t just the usual fury though, filled with a pain that made my soul ache. I couldn’t imagine who they had guarding that gate that was able to actually hurt him but I knew there wasn’t anything I could do to help in that fight.

 

Finish the mission here. The faster we get out the faster he can run away.

 

The thief in front of me used his dagger to cut the painting out of the frame, rolling it up in a tube as the wall behind it revealed a stone stairway leading downstairs. He started to step through but sensing a buzzing on my skin I reached out and stopped him.

 

“There's a barrier here. Are you sure it’s safe to step through?”

 

He glared at me for a moment, removing my hand from his shoulder, before stepping back and reaching down to the ground. He chanted some kind of guttural rhythm summoning up a pair of rats. They turned to him, as if  listening to the guttural speech before nodding and running through the barrier. 

 

For just a moment as they stepped through and the barrier was broken we all took a giant step back in reflex as a scent of feces, urine, decay, and stale sex overpowered us like we’d just gotten the wind knocked out of us.

 

I went down to one knee, reaching hastily into my pouch to pull out a vial of numbing powder which I hastily inhaled. It burned for a moment forcing me to cough before my sense of taste and scent were eliminated. 

 

I looked around to see the other thieves had all done similar actions.

 

Unfortunately I couldn’t help but frown when I looked at saw that the rats had both seemed to have collapsed from a heart attack, twitching with bloodied claws from scraping at their nose.

 

“I guess we can assume the barrier is there to keep the stench away from the rest of the mansion.” I grumbled wondering if that really was all there was to it.

 

“There is no way they’re alive down there… Can’t wait to burn this place to the ground.” I grumbled under my breath eyeing the thieves around me. Noticing the slight hesitation they have before nodding.

 

The thief who summoned the rats started to say something to me before shaking his head, steadying his breath, and taking a step beyond the barrier. I nodded to the other thieves for them to go in first before taking a breath and breaking the talisman John had given me before we split up when we got to the mansion. Each with our own tasks to take care of.

 

After a moment of conversation with the ghost of a beggar mage who had been starving himself in an attempt to see further into the unknown when he was captured in the same dragnet that had grabbed Frank. I walked into the portal and went down into the basement with the three other thieves. 

 

Title “Embraced by The Evil God” has shielded you.

 

I can’t say that I have lived a long life, though I can probably claim to have experienced more in my years than most who have lived twice as long.

 

I thought I understood what horror looks like…

 

I’ve traveled with Grandfather in his most bestial moments.

 

I’ve seen the evils of mankind at the hands of my former master.

 

I’ve even discarded my humanity having reached a new level of my magic others could only dream of.

 

None of it could have prepared me for this.

 

What I saw in that basement is something that I know will sit with me in my darkest moments.

 

This is what Hell looks like.

 

At some point I felt laughter bubble out of my lips, sending me to the knees, earning horrified looks from the thieves around me as something squishy broke beneath me as it failed to support my weight.

 

The Laughter of the Evil God bubbles forth from your lips.

 

Within moments the other thieves reacted the same, the evil gods infection spreading among us.

 

I could still feel the magic in the room, fuck I could see, the magic burnt into the foundation of the rooms astral space. It was pulsating, a living being pushing against the will of all living things still in here. Fighting against the pathetic defenses of the thieves had put up before they walked in.

 

How sad of them to break so easily.

 

They saw the physical space.

 

A room full of hundred of corpses, all naked and emancipated, some had died mid copulation while others were in the midst of devouring each other. Drawn in bodily fluids were messages of hatred, love, lust, and misery. Last words of those entrapped here. All the people were already dead, beneath us separated by metal grates was a vat of… fluids. Drained from the captives in the midst of their dying thralls. The entire space is full of smoke and incense no doubt filled with aphrodisiacs, hallucinogens, and other horrible creations meant to tear at the boundaries of the mind.

 

That was just the physical space.

 

The astral plane was… so much worse.

 

The dying scrawls on the walls were glowing like they still held the resentment of their writers and that emotion was a fuel to the living being that had been conjured into this space. The vats below were filled with the things saliva dripping from the ceiling. I could already see the aura’s of the other thieves falling apart, black tentacles digging into their bodies bleeding their souls and being absorbed into the vat below making it glow with a horrible purple hue filling the area with dense smoke. 

 

I thought the creature might attack us, or that maybe the black tentacles that appeared from the roof and bottoms of its mouth piercing out through the vat maybe was it’s attacks but now, as I felt it stabbing through my own astral body, draining me of my will I could tell that it wasn’t an attack at all. We were just prey who wandered willingly into its mouth.

 

It wasn’t attacking us. It was eating us.

 

“Boss Lady. You need to stand up.”

 

I turned around to see the ghost of Frank looking at me with a concerned gaze.

“What? Frank… How?” I muttered out confused words, struggling to form coherent thoughts as he pulled out an old knife he’d stolen from the first noble we robbed together. He used the knight to chop away at the tentacles sucking away my life force. The more he used it I could see whisps of his soul being ripped off and dragged down into the vat below.

 

Something in my instincts was screaming at me to stop him but so much of my energy was gone I could barely form thoughts let alone criticize how he saved me. 

 

“I started to go into the Beyond when I looked back and saw you walking into this thing's den. You know how they say your life flashes before your eyes when you die? It’s similar for us when we decided to let go and move on.” 

 

He cut away the last tentacle and his knife dissolved into the air as he put an arm underneath me and dragged me out of the monster's mouth and into the stairwell. 

 

The longer he stayed solidified I could see more of him falling off, like flesh on a zombie but he was a ghost so… ectoplasm? 

 

“I know that look on your face. It’s how you’d stare at John when you thought he wasn’t looking. You're dissociating and I can’t say I blame you… I died in this room… that thing killed me. Probably have eaten my soul too if it had fully formed by then.” I forced myself to look away from the room and at Frank’s body. 

 

It was how he’d died.

 

More bone than flesh, hair caked in… fluids. 

 

Clothes simply are not there.

 

Why was he here?

 

“Frank… why?”

 

I couldn’t form the full question, stopping when I saw that small grin on his face. “You really have to ask? You're the Boss Lady and you needed help… I’m just a soul now. If I can be put to work to help you… then so be it. Though I wish I could show a more presentable form for you. I think he’ll be jealous if he knows I was this close to you without my clothes.” He let out a half-hearted laugh at his own stupid joke.

 

He… came to help me?

 

I… Needed help… again?

 

All of a sudden I felt my body and mind seem to realign. 

 

I’m on a mission, I was supposed to be saving people but they're all dead. Grandfather is out there fighting for his life and I’m wasting time having a mental breakdown?!

 

So what if it’s some horrible astral being, they’re a dime a dozen!

 

I leaned over in the midst of my clear minded rage and felt my stomach contents empty onto the stairwell. Bodily disgust not just at the scene before me but my own reactions to it.

 

I could see in the corner of my eye changes to my status detailing all manner of titles and curses but I ignored them all. 

 

None of it mattered at the moment.

 

I forced myself to my feet, and gave Frank a hug. Letting just a single tear slip through.

 

“Thanks, Frank. I forgot something important there and you helped me find it again. Now step back and watch your boss lady work, like you’ve never been able to see before.”

To start with I let my physical and astral bodies disconnect. Without me needing to say anything I saw Frank use more of his soul’s power to carry me beyond the barrier at the painting before resting my body in the corner and turning back to watch. The walls between us do not matter in the astral plane, which worked more on ‘intention’ than ‘physics.’ 

 

Under most circumstances, there are a lot of limits on how a necromancer can really challenge a monster like this and the den of horror that it had bonded with.

 

Thankfully, for better or worse, I had plenty of dead to work with.

 

First I called the casters among the corpses. Most of their souls had dissipated into the vat below and were slowing being digested but by empowering them with my own mana I let them manifest within the sealed barrier the priest had so conveniently built for us, separating the space from the stairwell to the basement off from the rest of the mansion.

 

Conjurers, enchanters, alchemists, entropic manipulators, and so many more. Slaves, beggars, disgraced nobles alike came forth to assist me in my mechaniations. 

 

The creature could sense something shifting in the air as it began to proactively stab away with it’s tentacles but we were all aware of it so they weren’t difficult to dodge. All the more so with the thieves I had come in with, driven mad by the ‘Laughter of the Evil God’ and the horrors of this space drove them to slash away at the ground to try and get directly to the vat, forcing the creature to dedicate tentacles to holding them in place.

 

Magic is formed by intent.

 

The astral plane is built on intent.

 

How you cast, what you channel, whatever ritual you utilize none of it really matters. It’s just metaphor and willpower that tells a story of how your mana speaks to the fundamental principles of the world. When you cast, you're making an argument that you have enough power to dictate your ability to supersede the laws of the universe. 

 

So we  worked together to tell a story.

 

This mansion never had a basement.

 

The alchemists mixed bile and mana to etch runic words of ‘displacement’ and ‘separation’ into the walls overriding their own pleas for mercy from when they lived.

 

The conjurers brought forth elemental spirits of space and time, using the magic of higher tier beings to empower our ritual space.

 

The entropic manipulators and enchanters used the energies in the universe to turn the ‘chaos’ in this space to ‘order’ manipulating the laws with the argument that this horror and creature can’t represent ‘order’ so it can’t exist.

 

All the while I functioned as a conductor flowing mana into them and using my necromantic powers to instill ‘will’ into their aimless form while I worked to construct more beings from the soul vat. 

 

Time flowed as the ritual moved forward, all of us operating like factory workers building our own tiny piece of a larger master work.

 

At some point I felt my own soul bleeding and tearing.

 

I looked down to see my feet and legs had totally dissolved away.

 

“What?” I exclaimed in surprise.

 

I looked to see the last of the ritual fall into place as the being screamed at us striking out with his tentacles as our final piece clicked.

 

It latched onto my throat as I let out a horrible scream and I saw it’s eyes appear on the wall looking straight at me.

 

I thought this was the end of me when a man appeared in front of me.

 

Emancipated and nude he stabbed an old knife into the beast's eye and slashed away the tentacle that had wrapped around my throat before slamming his foot into my chest sending my spirit plummeting back to my body.

 

I felt the scream frozen in my throat when I opened the eyes of my body as I saw something bewildering. The space where the stairwell was seemed to dissolve like it was suddenly filled with a haze of black and white particles before the entire mansion vibrated and suddenly plummeted downward, having lost it’s support pillars and the space where a basement should have been.