Approaching the mountain was harder than I thought it would be. Not because of the demons, but because of the spiritual beasts. Kitsune, foxes of great magical power, signified by their tails, with the greatest of all having nine tails, had wrapped the mountain in a maze of illusions, they would not let any mortal creature pass.
While the Kitsune could not oppose the true demons, for their demonic cultivation allowed them to see through the illusions of the Kitusune, it was enough to bind the mortal minions of the corrupted cultivators inside the mountain the spirits now called Blood Mountain.
You could say they reacted poorly to the smell of us as we came.
“Demon tainted, you will not join your brethren. We may not have the power to stop your master, but you have wandered far from his side, and will not live to return to it.” The voice of the fox spirit called from the tree, but it was wood chi, not a throat that made the sound. It was a good trick, and the demons in me would have fallen for it. I had a fragment of a god who wasn’t strictly speaking all seeing, but who had traded one eye to the well of wyrd or fate for knowledge no man or god should possess. He cheats. Well.
I turned and bowed to an innocent looking fern. I always liked ferns, they may be plants, but they had the decency to look like saw tooth spears, as if given the chance they would full on cut you, but for now they were just enjoying a nap under the trees. My bride Astrella was in many ways very similar. This fern however swayed regularly even when I very casually extended my domain into the wind chi in the area to still it. A fern swaying in the wind when all the plants around it stopped swaying when I stopped the wind is probably not a fern.
"The very best of evenings to you, nine tailed deceiver. Your illusions are masterful, and would bind the eyes of mortal men or beasts, yet we are neither. You call us demon tainted, but we are both less and more than that. We are demon hunters, and I can smell them on the wind, a mountain where their chi fountains like blood from a wound in the very world, and I would bathe my spear in it until that thirsty blade can drink no more.”
A fox wavered into existence as the illusions faded.
“I am Nimue, one who serves the Earth Dragon Jiaolongma, and it is her will the evil of this mountain be contained. What our kind can do to hinder and bind them will be done. You stink of their kind and claim to oppose them?”
I laughed, long and hard, leaning on Astrella who shoved me off and slapped me hard on the back of my head.
“Be respectful to Nimue, oaf. You are my husband and if you shame me like a fool my mother will hear of it.” Astrella said, apparently done letting me speak. Oger’s hadn’t historically done marriage and were a pretty strict matriarchy. It was considered progressive to let the male survive breeding, and actually forming a relationship was something between heresy and serious ground-breaking kink. Gods but I loved that woman!
Astrella bowed and tried actual diplomacy and truth.
“We don’t serve the demons, and we don’t oppose them. I mean, you don’t oppose mice or rabbits do you fox?” Astrella asked.
The fox curled her tail under her and asked softly. “What are the demons to you then?”
I laughed, and the fox hunched down, ready to bolt away in clear fear. “Food.” I told her honestly.
We were not troubled by illusions again, but the Kitsune were clearly testing us. There were dozens of lesser demonic beasts who had been lured away from the mountain or from the army led from it and trapped in their illusions, we were lead to all of them.
There was a demonic boar, charging at foes that were not there, poison poured from its mouth, and acid dripped from its many unhealed wounds from when the demons captured and corrupted it. Its eyes rolled in madness and pain as the demonic chi corrupted its beast core into a demonic one. All that existed for now was destruction, and it had not the will or wit to sense the illusions the Kitsune trapped it within, yet they had not the power to destroy it.
I tapped Bubbles and she drew her bow. She charged a shot with all of her power. Mana blossomed within her so strongly that the boar turned to face her. Wood chi ran in the bow so strongly that a hundred men could not have drawn it, yet her body and chi held it at full draw as she filled the arrow with chi. Wood chi filled it beyond measure as fire and earth filled the tip to the point of blazing, fire feeding the earth to produce metal chi so dense it crackeld with lightning. Wind chi hummed in the air around it in a tempest growing so dense it became a pure vibration that seemed to distort space around the shaft.
She released it and the lightning split the air before the arrow, parting the sky as the tornado raged behind it, spinning it faster than any bullet ever fired as the sound barrier shattered in thunder louder than sky borne lightning as the arrow flew. All the metal chi and wood that were woven in the arrow were tested as it struck demon infused tissue. This mana beast had been an ascendent beast, the king of this forest, second in power only to a dragon or divine beast. Corruption had tainted that power, not destroyed it. It was the pinnacle of earthly life, tainted and corrupted to become its destroyer.
The arrow shattered inside the demon’s flesh, tunnelling a hole in it large enough for Bubbles both legs, but the explosion was the least violent part of its death. The earth and fire that raged within the beast were drawn into the metal of the shattered arrow and fed to the wood chi of the shaft. The shaft drank the blood of the boar, and the power of the tempest that had driven it here and fed it to the wood.
The decay of the boar fed on everything inside it, filled everythig inside it, and the wood chi drank that too. The wood rotted, but was not consumed by the demon beast flesh, but flowered in the pure death of the earth. Wood became fungus and spread through the body, the decay of life ate the flesh of the corrupted demon beast chained to unnatural life. The boar had fungus flower inside its flesh like cancer, feeding on and invading its flesh, drinking its power as soon as it was drawn in. The demonic chi of corruption was fed upon as it drew upon the miasma leaking from Blood Mountain to try to sustain its unnatural life.
Bubbles walked to the beast and reached inside it, tearing its beating heart from its chest in both hands. it was easily the size of her head, but the wild boar eyes rolled in fear as she held it before them.
“Be at peace, forest lord. Die screaming, demon.” She spoke, and began to tear at the heart with tiny human teeth. Great swaths of purple-black ichor flowed into her mouth with every bite and strange energies blazed down her meridians.
Inside her mana heart a spark of a god, the Chooser of the Slain, the Lord of the Mound, the first necromancer, Odin, feasted. The power bled from her mana veins, seeping into her tissues, the demonic essence extracted from the chi like the other elemental essences as her body merged the spark of the divine with the hunger of the demon to turn her body into a furnace for purification of demonic chi.
She ate the heart of the demon she killed and her body broke through to become the third demon eater in this world. She screamed as the heavens split above her head, and lightning rained down on her in a heavenly tribulation as she passed into the next stage.
Drawn to the vortex of power, a demonic Ice Wolf charged Bubbles where she knelt before the boar, able to see the flare of power through the fox born illusions. His great mouth opened wide enough to swallow a horse as he began to howl a blast of pure ice at the kneeling and oblivious Bubbles.
Sgt Li Sung Won blazed forward in a charge that brought his sword down in a slash that seemed so filled with sword chi that it could split the heavens, and the ice blast split like the sea before a warship’s prow.
He pointed the sword at the wolf and spoke once. “Mine”
The road to the mountains was filled with magical beasts doing their best to trap and destroy demonic beasts that had already been corrupted by the Demon Sui’s minions, I knew they were using us to destroy the beasts they lacked the power to, and I didn’t mind.
The immortals held themselves above this world and its troubles. The Celestial Dragons turned their eyes to the gods in heaven and away from the spirits of the lands and waters, the beasts of forest and farm, the poor mortals of this world. Why should they believe that any cultivators, those who walked the path of the immortals, would risk themselves against demons for the sake of spiritual beasts? Ascension was the goal of cultivation, passing beyond this world, even the human mortals they sprang from were beneath their notice after all, why should we care about the spiritual beasts who even now fought and died to preserve the balance and life of the world while humanity hid behind its walls, wealth and arrogance?
They were right to test us. Most of the race would fail. I was no saint. I was not even a particularly good man. Astrella was a better person than I was, but she was no saint either. Li Sung Won, Bubbles, and the boys were even less saintly. We were not great immortal cultivators. We were not walking the path to heaven. We were not made of the stuff of the stars and divinity.
We were blood, shit, sweat and cum. We were soldiers. Born in filth and living in worse. We were as deep in the muck as any peasant, yet we lived more fiercely than any Grand Master. We did not shelter behind the walls when the storm came, we marched in it. We did not run from the woods when the fire roared, we fought it. We did not run from the river when it rose, we picked up sacks and spade and shoved the damned thing back in its hole.
When demons rose from the hells to devour all life, we ripped out their hearts and ate them. We will never know immortality, we will age and die, because the god we chose to embrace did not leave us to take his place in heaven, but down here in the shit and blood with us.
The demons own the night, but we are thieves, and we will steal it.
We came at last to the wards upon the mountain. They were works of such complexity that my own eye could not follow them. Odin hummed and chuckled in my mind, a grin splashed across Bubbles and Astrella, showing that they too heard his laughter. Li Sung Won showed nothing. That dude could teach a stone stoicim. I wondered briefly how Bubbles managed to seduce him in the first place. Funny how the mind wanders when you are close to suicide. Back to business. The wards, and the problem.
The wards I had already spoken of, they were truly a work of terror. They drew all mana from anything that touched them, turning it into demonic chi. Any living being that crossed it would die, the mana sucked out of them. Any spiritual being that passed them would have its power stripped away to feed the very array, arriving on the other side as powerless prey for the demons left in the mountain.
That was probably why the two problems hadn’t done anything about it yet.
Two Pixu roared and snapped at the barrier. Winged lions, if lions generally came in the size of a main battle tank. Pixu were the guardians of the dead, and the abomination that was Blood Mountain had driven them into a frenzy.
I could feel it, we could all feel it. There was a sacrifice raging under the mountain. An abomination that stained the earth and tainted the sky, that twisted the trees and fouled the water, even the smoke that rose above was thick with filth as if even flame could not purify it. Yet the wards would not let the Pixu pass.
The Pixu turned to me and their roar paralyzed me. All my power, real and borrowed, was nothing before them. The gap between what I had become and what they were was the difference between my body and Blood Mountain itself.
I raised my spear, arm trembling.
“Hail to thee, guardians of the dead. I am Bolverk, servant of the Feeder of Ravens, Lord of the Mound, Chooser of the Slain, the Spear Shaker, Victory Father, the Hanged One; Odin.”
I felt their gaze blaze into me, and judgement flowed with it. I saw my flaws, my weaknesses, my fears, my desires. I saw my lies. Too many to count. I lied to myself to live with myself, but facing them all at once was hard.
“You are as corrupt as they. Why should I not kill you now, before they take you and corrupt you as yet another pawn?” The first said, and I had no answer, but Odin did.
The three interlocking triangles of our brands blazed on our chests with cold fire, and the eye that was not, the gaping socket in my skull leaked lightning as the air around me gathered into a storm lit with lightning. A voice what was not my voice echoed forth, in it were the sounds of weapons clashing, sword and spear, gun and bomb, fang and claw. The sound of every war ever fought, every skirmish long forgotten in causes long forsaken rang in that voice.
“Those who have given themselves to me are forever bound. In life and in death, for even the grave is no bar to my call. No force in the nine worlds may take them. They may die, for I will not spare them that, but they will not be bound.”
The Pixu stepped back and bowed, from their bowed heads the second one asked.
“What will they do, if I allow them to pass?”
Odin allowed me to answer for myself. “I will teach them the meaning of slaughter, and make such a sacrifice that will teach demons to tremble in fear.”
The Pixu flinched again, looked at each other, but let us pass.
We had each taken a few demon’s at this point, and I was reasonably sure the wards would only rip the mana from us to feed it back to us as demonic chi. Unpleasant, but in the way of puking up that last tray of shooters you knew was a mistake, rather than being bled to death by demons kind of unpleasant.
I was at least 70% sure we wouldn’t die as I turned to my troops and lied my ass off.
“It’s fine. These defenses won’t even slow us down. Trust me!” I smiled my best smile. Astrella, my beloved and niave wife smiled sweetly. Then she picked me up by my pack and heaved me through the barrier like tossing a water balloon at a fan to watch the pretty splash.
What the hell, where was the trust, where was the love? It isn’t like I lied to her all that often, or about anything important. Not that she knew about at least.
I felt something being ripped out of me and rammed into me in ways that were a fundamental violation of my existence. I would have screamed like a soul in torment if I hadn’t hit the ground like a sack of wet cement and had the breath blasted out of me. The urge to scream was gone before I could breathe, so I got up, dusted myself off. Picked up my spear and looked back at them, then ahead at the mountain.
“Form up, skirmish order, we move silent from here on.” I said, and my troops passed through the barrier with looks of silent agony, but they took their position in skirmish order. The time for jokes had passed. There was no doubt we would strike a great blow at Demon Sui tonight, a decent chance we could put the war back on at least an even footing. There was a very much smaller chance we would survive.
From this point on, getting the little things right, and the enemy making mistakes were all we had to rely on if we wished to survive. The Victory Father was with us, but he didn’t favour the foolish. He promised us victory, not life. The second one we had to steal for ourselves.
I don’t have the words to describe the obscenity that the mountain had become. This had been a holy place once. Before the time of the cultivators, when the tribes of humans worshipped the gods and worked with the spirits, before they had learned how to unlock the magic within themselves, they had made this mountain a center of worship, and a tomb for their revered dead. In the time since the First Emperor, the worship of the gods had been replaced by the reverence of the Celestial Bureaucracy, the Dragons who enforced the Laws of Heaven shaped the world above in tune with the decree of the Most Holy Gods. The human cultivators who walked the path of ascension could progress upon the path until they faced the tribulations of the stairway to heaven, either dying or winning their way through to entry into the Celestial Realm, where they spent their time in contemplation of the mysteries of the Laws of Heaven, or studied at the feet of the Celestial Dragons to learn the ways of shaping reality itself, to become part of the workings of the gods.
Temples had become simply an arm of government, worship had been replaced with ambition and the sects. The people drifted into the rising cities and the mountain fell into disuse. To this had come Demon Sui. Starting slowly, he began corrupting failed human cultivators, teaching them demonic cultivation, teaching them the art of blood sacrifice. He had brought them here to do it. In the holy mountain sanctified to house the revered dead, he had brought blood sacrifice, soul enslavement, soul torture, and spiritual corruption. Over decades he had laced the mountain with soul trapping wards so that the spirits cut screaming from their flesh could not escape to the afterlife, nor return to the wheel of rebirth in this world. Instead, they were bound in torment into great demonic seals.
Those seals made this mountain a violation of all the laws of heaven. In this place, death could not bring release. This place was cut off from the gods of the Celestial Realms, and the dragons of that realm could not even perceive it. The demonic seals cut the earth of this mountain off from the living chi of the world itself, even as it was cut off from the natural death and the gods of the underworld who even now screamed silently beyond the wards for what was stolen from them, from what they had been denied. Still, those worthies had turned away from the world, choosing to use the human tools of the cultivators on the path of ascension to do their work in return for their knowledge of the Laws of Heaven, and the power it represented.
The gods of this world had become Ministers of the Celestial Bureaucracy, the Celestial Dragons had become Functionaries, and the Immortal Cultivators who ascended were nothing more than Officials in that great spiritual sanctuary of perfect order. They were so heavenly bound, they were no earthly god.
What was in front of me was a cyst. An abscess. A cancer. A pustule of pure wrongness that ate life and wept suffering as a wound upon the world, and which Demon Sui had made the source of infection that would devour the whole world.
I had waited too long to address my own cancer. I had allowed it to run wild in my body until it had reached too deeply inside me for any poison to kill it all, but there had been a time it could have been otherwise. There had been a time, in the beginning, when I could have had it cut out if only I had been paying attention to the threat and responded when it first arose. Like the cultivators of this world, like the Great Sects and the Celestial Bureaucracy above them, I had been arrogant in my own power right up until cancer had woven itself so deeply inside me that all I had become was prey, and all I could do was lie uselessly in my bed while it devoured me.
This time it would be different. This cancer, by the blessings of Holy Odin and the machinations of Demon Sui, I was brought face to face with on the very day it sought to break loose into the body. This time I could cut it out, and burn it clean, or die trying.
The wards on the mountain itself built on the blessings of it. They turned the blessings and protection of the holy dead enshrined within into a wall to keep out the Celestial Magic of the higher realms by infusing the very sanctity of the Holy Mountain with demonic chi through bindings of blood sacrifice. Inside this barrier, the dead could not die. Inside this barrier, death brought no release, and there were no gods to turn to, only demons to be tormented and corrupted by. This mountain existed to turn captured Spiritual Beasts into Demon Beasts, to turn slain cultivators into powerful undead, and to take those captured living cultivators and forcibly violate their body, minds, and souls until they voluntarily opened themselves to the demonic chi to become more demonic cultivators. It was a long process, and failed as often as it worked, but the dead would just become more powerful undead, so even those were not really losses.
This was where Demon Sui turned the righteous cultivators and spiritual beasts who were the natural defenders of this world into weapons to destroy it. This was the greatest abomination and evil in this world, and my name is Bolverk, the Evil Worker. They left a loaded gun lying before a soldier with nothing left to lose and a mountain of screaming dead before the Lord of the Mound, the Hell Road Rider, the Lord of the Hanged. Demon Sui was correct, this place was safe from all the righteous cultivators of this world, and no holy beast could pass its defenses. I am not a righteous man, I am a killer of men, and they didn’t even bar the door against me.
The first cultist I killed was an accident. I followed the smell to the shitters. I don’t care if you are the holiest monk on the mountain or the most degenerate fiend in hell, if you are not a full spiritual body righteous cultivator who lives on a steady died of pure thoughts and avoidance of sins of the body, then you have to poop sometimes, and that smells a certain way. We came up through the privies. It was not pleasant, but I had a feeling rancid shit would be the least filthy thing we had to fear in this place. While we were doing out best to wipe off in the privies, a surprised demonic adept came in, already unfastening his robe to do his business.
I struck with my spear through his gut, penetrating his dantain and rupturing his energy center with my own invasive chi. I felt his soul, felt the corruption in it. This was no tortured prisoner, this was a demonic cultivator who chose torture and murder as a shortcut to power, who chose desecration as his sacrament, rape as his pleasure, and pain as his only joy. I had demon and god inside me, for I was a demon hunter. By my own hand I had created us as judges, juries, and executioners. I ripped his soul from his body through my spear and fed it to the demons inside me, ripping his cultivation out and feeding its power to my own. I felt his chi flowing through my mana veins, my flesh already stripping its elemental essences and demonic essences to increase my own power slightly. His face when I did to him what he had done to so many was a mix of fear and denial. How dare I, how dare anyone violate the sanctity of his soul? How could I do to him what he had done to other, lesser beings? By what right did I do this to him. I twisted the spear, and ripped it out.
As he fell off my spear, and his dying eyes caught sight of the blood drenched shaft, I whispered his answer. “By this right.”
I turned and lowered my pack. I took a scoop of salt from my pack and extended a line along the ward lines on the privies, letting the blood from my sacrifice mix with the salt. I began to chant, both a prayer and a judgement.
“Cattle die, kinsmen die,
You too will die.
One thing alone will not die
The fame of a good man’s deeds.
On this holy mountain
In this temple of the dead
Let the righteous be upheld
Let the wicked be bound
By blood by fire by steel
By spirit by will by deed
I cleanse this place by blood
I sanctify it with souls”
My own power, the power of Odin, and the soul of the demonic cultivator poured into the salt. Salt is the bane of the undead, for it will not let the demonic chi pass, and will not allow undead bound only by demonic souls to pass. Living demonic cultivators, and those who have eaten demons like ourselves could cross, but only because we were bound in living flesh, and lit by a living soul.
I could feel this tiny part of the mountain’s wards bleed from the purple/black demonic chi into the scarlet of fresh spilled blood. Not undeath, but death had returned to the mountain. Sure we smelled like shit right now, but I had a feeling we would find something other than water to wash ourselves clean with.
We exited the privies and began hunting. We coursed the halls silently, and killed anyone we found. The living quarters of the demonic cultivators were heavily warded against their own undead, I guess they tended to murder each other with their toys, or perhaps they simply feared what they created. Thos wards would not stop us. They had internal demonic wards, ready to strip the life out of any righteous cultivator, or trap any of the spirits of the slain who had resisted demonic corruption. Astrella and I at first repeated the charm and the chant until we had trained Li Sung Won and Bubbles on how to do it. From that point, we stopped to purify every ward we passed. The lines feeding the great demon stones began to bleed crimson into the blackest shadows, and the bound holy power of the mountain began at last to strain at the chains of demonic chi and sacrifice that bound them.
I never expected us to remain undiscovered forever, in fact, I was surprised we had lasted this long. I guess when you stand in the middle of an unholy mountain, whose heart is a rip in reality that calls forth demons, and whose dread halls torture captured cultivators into broken slaves, or raise slain enemies into undead thralls, you get a little smug about security. This was a fortress carved out by thousands to house tens of thousands, this was a base that was nearly deserted by the army currently besieging the Celestial Dragon Sect, and my single platoon rattled around in it like a small rock in a big boot. That being said, your toe will find that small rock eventually, and seldom is anyone happy with the result.
Say what you will about undead, they may be stupid, but they are at least obedient. We came around the corner to find a squad of ten undead standing utterly still holding their spears and shields at perfect attention. You could have mistaken them for statues if it were not for the fact that two of them turned to us as we attempted to pass and crossed their spears to block us.
“You do not bear the talisman of the Core Disciples. You may not enter the Vault of the Unholy.” There was no emotion in the voice, this was the body of some sect warrior who had fallen bravely in battle and been animated long after his death to be a simple zombie, not a free thinking predator like a vampire, but a programable automaton. This was meat puppeted by a minor demon, without a living soul trapped and bound in the flesh, it would have access to the body enhancements of the cultivator in life, but none of its spiritual techniques or learning. Still, crossing your spears in front of your potential enemies face is stupid.
With one hand I grabbed the crossed spears, and with a second I thrust my own through the body and heart of the zombie on the right. I ripped its demon out through my spear as I ate it. It tasted a bit like those hard sort of toffee candies you see only at Halloween, the ones that come in the orange wrapper with black bats on it that no on seems to know who sells them, but you get every Halloween anyway. Zombie souls taste like bad Halloween candy. Good to know.
Astrella shoved her spear through two of the zombies on the left, impaling two skulls with one thrust, either because she wanted to show me up, or because she wanted to stop them raising the alarm. If the first, then she succeeded. If the second, she failed. The last pair of the ten had a bronze gong, and one began to pound it with his spear end, I guess the battle was on.
We forced our way into the Vault of the Unholy, a great chamber in which there was indeed the thing we had come for, a tear in the world itself, an opening into the Abyss of Demons. Here was the heart of the enemies power, the heart of the mountain itself, and there was nothing between us and it but perhaps fifty human cultivators working on a dozen altars with bound and screaming captives of various levels of power, four huge demons that could not have left this cavern by any of the dozen doors that seemed to radiate out from it due to their immense size. Of course those dozen doors could lead to hundreds of other enemies, and that ringing gong had been answered by at least three others, repeating the alarm throughout the mountain.
Only a fraction of their forces would have been left behind. A tiny fraction. A tiny fraction of thousands of warriors, sorcerers, demons, and undead is by any normal description quite a bit larger than a single platoon of newly initiated demon hunters. Odin, the Victory Father is with us! Of course, the fact he loves us best dying heroically makes that less reassuring than you would think.
My mouth was working with whatever part of my mind didn’t do distraction, because while I was thinking about how we were all screwed I was already barking orders.
“Bubbles, Li Sung Won take the two behind, Astrella, get the one horn on the left, the two horn on the right is mine. Everyone else, kill a necromancer and start freeing the prisoners. Check everyone for demons first, eat anything you find.” I had a spear in each hand, one taken from the zombies in the chamber before. I took it and threw it into the Vault of the Unholy, past the demons and into the tear itself.
“ODIN!” I shouted as I threw the spear. This was an old magic, a pledge of sacrifice. All who fell upon the field were dedicated to Odin, but you could take no treasure from the field. You traded all possible loot from the battle for his favour, and you didn’t always get it, but what you got for sure is that every soul that fell upon the field that had been Spear Hallowed before the battle would be a sacrifice to Odin. In this place, in the heart of the Blood Mountain, in the center of the corrupted demon wards chaining down the holy mountain, that was no small thing. Of course, in order to make a big enough sacrifice to take over the wards ourselves, we had to make sure we lived long enough to sacrifice a whole lot of them, not just a little bit of us.
