The Butcher’s fear was fading, but the rage and humiliation that rose in its place was a thousand times worse. He looked across the table at the Queen of Pain, his fellow Legate, one whose political star was supposed to be in decline since she showed weakness requiring the Butcher’s own XVII Legion to relieve her own legion besieged at Dust by the Holy Knights.

Instead, his power play using the unknown power that broke the Holy Knights seems to have backfired. Clover, the single most straightforward of his Centurions, the least politically motivated group in the whole of the Dread Empire turned out to be hiding secret powers more abominable than the hated Holy light of the Light gods.

In his Knight exam, the goody-two shoes farm boy centurion had bound him, THE BUTCHER, like some helpless sacrifice, his tentacles of darkness threatening to kill him and violate his corpse if he dared make a sound, dared to move or resist even slightly. His own bound demon quaked in fear inside, not daring to stir against whatever power bound them. Worse, the demon refused to speak of WHAT that power was, only that its darkness was not of Yn’Tereth, God of Evil at all.

A detachment of his own Shadow Knights failed to catch Centurion Clover when he deserted, and the Huntsman who did catch him all died without being able to report back. The Butcher fumed, and the Queen of Pain smirked. How much she knew, or suspected, he did not know. Instead of her fearing his unknown power, now she scented blood in the water, and the Queen of Pain would be quick to strike as any shark. He had to prove his power, and prove it with blood if he didn’t want to face her, and her superior magics.

The Queen of Pain sipped her tea as he sat across her desk in her office as they discussed the billeting of his troops outside the fortress.

“Oh dear, what is this I hear about one of your centurions running off. Worse, I hear he only ran off after he succeeded in his Knight’s exam. Don’t tell me one of you precious, budding powers has slipped your control?”

The Queen of Pain smirked as she observed the Butcher trying to hide his reactions. He was a brute and a sadist. His inability to control his own lusts made him weak. Those who intimidate their subordinates rather than impressing them get too used to dealing with those too afraid to question them and grow too comfortable showing weaknesses and making visible mistakes. She surrounded herself with hungry predators, they would turn on her at the first hint of weakness, so she grew ever stronger. The Butcher seemed to have missed this memo in his quest for quick power. It was not about appearances, sooner or later every bluff got called. It was always about strength in the end.

“I dismissed him for heresy. His powers failed to please Yn’Tereth. The fool fled; but fled in his knight’s armour. He has no clue he wears his death. That armour is bound to my own demon, and I will feed him to the Hellfire this night.”

The Butcher boasted. Honestly, he hated using that failsafe. The reminder might cause his own Shadow Knights to begin to look for ways to disarm those failsafes, or worse, to be aware that he required them against his own knights. To show fear of a subordinate’s betrayal meant the subordinate might just succeed in that betrayal; a thought he did not want his knights to contemplate.

The Queen of Pain looked at a report her aide handed her.

“Oh dear, well you might want to put a bit of a rush on that. It seems your deserter’s former cohort seems to have failed to come back from their patrol; do you think they have deserted you for him? I rather suspect at least one or two of them will be from old Legionary families and know about the Knight Armour bindings.”

The Butcher failed to conceal his shock. He bellowed like a gelded ox. “What?!?”

Smiling softly, she extended the report. His underlings feared him too much. They lacked any initiative. Her own didn’t fear her, they courted her respect like so many ravens looking for anything shiny they could bring back to please her. Shinnies like the desertion of a hated rival’s most successful cohort.

The Butcher stormed back to his command tent, the laughter of the Queen of Pain driving him like a whip. He dismissed his knights, and called upon his Tribunes. The secrets of Demonic cultivation were taught by Yn’Tereth, God of Evil. He had helped to cast down his Titan parents and secure the rise of the gods to rule the world. He had no intention of allowing his own demons to gain similar powers. His path of demonic cultivation bound demon to human, and human to him. The demon could not feed without the human, and the human could not command it without the god.

All were his slaves, and power was both the lure that brought them to him, and the chains that bound them. All his chains were traps, every power given was a control. He was the god of treachery and ambition both, so he knew that in service to their ambition, fools would always betray themselves.

Setting the ritual circle, the Butcher looked at his Tribunes, his acolytes. In return for his teachings, and a sliver of his power, they had let him place a sliver of his own demon inside them. He had bound their demons into the service of his own. Each grew in power from the scraps he fed them, yet each of their demons was bound in service to his own. His own demon jumped at the opportunity, knowing how much his own power would grow, finding out too late that his soul split between each of the acolytes now left the main portion in the Butcher’s own body too weak to dare resist or betray his master.

Every tie in the Dread Empire was a trap, every gift a treachery, and every power a weakness. Clover had taken the armour of a Shadow Knight, an armour ensorcelled to be stronger than five times its own thickness of the best forged steel, able to turn aside the lesser magics of most sorcerers, and blunt that even of the greatest. It also had the fires of its forging bound in its steel, fires that could be recalled and freed by the power and will of the Legate who issued them. Clover wore his death, and when Butcher completed his ritual circle, he would reenact the forging of Clover’s Shadow Knight armour, with Clover still in it. Butcher imagined the smiling idiot dying screaming, and knew, just knew, he had to let him know it was Butcher who killed him

The ritual circle complete and his gathered Tribunes linking their power to his own, he shaped the sending not only to Clover’s armour, but to Clover himself. It was not enough to kill him. For the crime of making the Butcher feel helpless and terrified in his own command tent, he had to see Clover’s fear, and hear him begging as he died.

Clover’s POV

Meanwhile, several miles past the border to the Savage Land, I, no longer either Centurion or Knight reflected upon the complexity of the world. I fled the Holy Land because of my tentacle friends, and the fear that their obvious demonic nature inspired in others. Now I fled the Dread Empire because the non demonic nature of my tentacle friends inspired even more fear. Good feared him, evil feared him. Boars seemed to really want to rip my nuts off, and even good natured dwarves seemed to feel greeting me with swarms of crossbow bolts was the obvious hello. For a boy who harboured no ill will towards anyone who wasn’t mean to his mother, I feel the world seemed to be less friendly than mom taught me to expect. Perhaps it was me. Maybe if my Knight’s helmet covered less of my face and people could see my smile they would fire less spells and siege engines at me? It was definitely a thought worth trying out.

It was while I was jogging and musing in this manner that he felt his armour suddenly lift into the air. As I felt the familiar power wrap about my body, I saw the image of my old commander, the Butcher appear in front of me.

“Clover, you abomination. You dared to lay unclean tentacles upon me. Die screaming you son of a whore!” The Butcher began laughing as I began to burn.

My armour, the heavy plate that could turn aside scorpion bolts and heavy lances suddenly burst into fire. I felt my skin burn, my flesh actively bubble and melt. The air in my lungs suddenly superheated and scored my lungs as if I stood in a blast furnace. My body blazed.

But I had burned before.

My golden will was woven in that flesh, and as the demonic fire burned away my mortal flesh, my golden will, the immortal essence of the Titan began to rebuild it. I hung suspended in pain, the power of a full circle of a dozen sorcerer tribunes, and all of their demons held me in the blast furnace of hellfire, the fires the gods created to punish mortals.

But that which lived inside me, that which answered my will was older than that. Older than hellfire, older than hell. What blazed in me was the will that first looked upon the primordial darkness and bid fire to come forth from the darkness to make light.

My will was that which spawned the first fire, eons before the gods rose, eons before they created the pale echo of hellfire. I burned, I blazed, my flesh was in a crucible of hellfire like the crucible that I used to heat the bronze I made my weapons from, bronze rendered stronger than any steel when infused with my own golden will, and transformed into celestial bronze.

I screamed in that fire, and the darkness of my tentacle friends lashed out, locking onto the demons that even now struggled in fear to break away from the enchantment as my flesh burned but did not die. My tentacles, the primordial chaos that preceded the universe, the darkness that preceded light was not the shadow born of light, but the true dark that was beyond it. No thing of shadow can hide from the true dark, and my tentacle friends lashed out along the chains of Butcher’s ritual to reach along those chains binding each demon to Butcher’s demon, and each demon, including the Butcher’s, to their master’s flesh. They reached, and they ate.

I burned and burned, but as I burned old flesh away, new flesh replaced it. If my will transformed common bronze to celestial bronze, the hellfire reforging my flesh was transforming it as the continual body tempering of my continued wounding and healing had begun. Transforming normal mortal flesh into something stronger, something better. My flesh was becoming celestial flesh, and my tentacle friends were stealing the material to do so from the circle of Tribune sorcerers and their demons that the Butcher had bound to his ritual for my execution. The screamed soundlessly as their cheeks hollowed and their skin grew slack as they seem to hollow from within. The black aura of their possessing demons seemed to flicker and fade as if drawn down the very demonic chains that bound them to the ritual.

The Butcher laughed and laughed until I reached out and laid my blazing hand on his throat. My throat was a raw and half made thing, my skin was bronze sheathed in firelight, my eyes two blazing stars bright beyond the dreams of flames.

His shock when my flesh and blood hand caught him in his tent through the vision of his sending as my words rasped in his ears, was total.

“Did you just call my mother a whore?” I asked him.

The Butcher had given his power to the ritual, and had no magic left to lash out with, so he drew the blood steel dagger at his belt and rammed it into my naked belly. The blade snapped with a pathetic clink. He slammed the hilt against me twice more before his hand numbed at crashing against abs harder than his bones.

“Call her a whore one more time Butcher.” I demanded. He clawed at my hands but dared not speak. I saw his trews darken as the Legate known only as the Butcher pissed himself in fear.

I drove my tentacle friends into him, for theirs was the gift of unmaking, theirs was the primordial chaos that preceded all order, and which hungered only to return all to that primordial dark. Plus, they loved mom, and he was being quite the asshole to her.

“You always were spineless. Now I take away your ability to hide it.” I ordered as my tentacle friends reached inside and unmade his bones. I took the essence into myself, further strengthening and tempering my bones with not only the minerals but the magic imbued in his bones.

I let him fall. He fell like a deflated kick ball. His body struggled to breathe, but without ribs there was no hope. He suffocated in a puddle, and I looked around the ritual circle and saw that each of his tribunes was sucked dry as if long dead husks. I wonder what happened there? Oh well, I hurt more than I can remember ever hurting, and the Legion command staff wasn’t my problem anymore.

I withdrew my consciousness from the sending that connected us and fell from the sky.

Landing on the ground shaking, naked and helpless, I had only my spear and my Xiphos. Even my boots had burned. I was naked in the Savage Lands, but at least the Legion was done looking for me. I thought about screaming, but shaking hard as I was I don’t think I could manage it. Instead, I passed out.

If something wanted to come by and eat me, they were free to do so. I was tired of the world right now anyway.