Chapter 52: No Time for Caution
Another burst of darkness radiates in the space where your chest was occupying a second before. Ducking to the floor at the last second causes you to yank Father Pevrel to the ground with you. He has enough self-control to not even shout, but he fires you a heated stare as you scramble into an upright position and try to rapidly explain.
"The attacks are getting closer. We're going to do this together. Mercy, Spirit, Vengeance, you, and I." You lead Father Pevrel's hand to the divine locket over your heart. He instantly tightens his hand over the hot metal.
The two of you stay close to the ground, ready to run at a second's notice. The priest's breath is rapid, but he speaks with a level and firm voice.
"On your mark."
You can't express how much it means to have his faith in you. There's no need to say another word to him, though. Your actions will be more than thanks enough.
The same cold tilt that crept into your body moments before now creeps into your voice.
"These blasphemers seek to distort your truth, Spirit."
Heat and clarity binds together between your body and soul, dulling and sharpening your mind in ways that has you struggle to stay even on your knees. You gasp, grinning towards the treeline as the illusory growth fades in and out of view. It's like every bit of Magic in the area is actually a strand of unfurling, frayed thread.
"Join forces with Truth and Justice incarnate."
A wave of silver courses through the gold dripping from your hands, intertwining three Gods with the might of two men. The hold that Father Pevrel has kept on your hand has yet to falter, though you can smell his flesh beginning to cook from the newly molten metal.
Your Relic pulses for a split second from the degree of power running through it.
Your heart feels like it could burst through your chest.
The presence of so many conflicting forces does not shatter your Relic, but hairline cracks run through your mind. You try to remind yourself that your Relic is
your vessel. It is what will keep this union together. Not your body. Not your mind. Not
your soul.
You look to the forest beyond with purpose. Divinity divorces your speech from sanity.
"Grant me your verity, that We may remove these liars from existence."
The ground quakes. Every tree in your immediate radius shivers, fading in and out from reality. Those that are of Agriculture's domain persist, though their leaves have turned to plated gold, and threads of silver run along their boughs. Those that were naught but an illusion become sucked into gaping pits of shadow, searing with a white-hot heat that incinerates every illusion as soon as it came.
Metal and blood bursts forth in a deafening roar from yours and your ally's feet.
"Maintain our hold on reality!"
Solar flares dance at the back of your mind. The light around you has intensified tenfold, searing away the last few of your enemy's attacks, but Mercy's sun is already eclipsed on the periphery of the woods by more Magic.
There's something about your attacker that's ripping Mercy's will asunder. It just won't do. You drop the sun from your inner sky, bringing down the light that encapsulated Wearmoor's woods, and release your hold on Father Pevrel's hand.
Normal daylight returns to the woods for a split second. As the world stabilizes, your vision feels like it rends in three.
To your right, your ally breaks into a run. Every step causes another spike of jet-black sin to protrude from the ground, skewering the enemy's attacks as if they were tangible victims for him to penetrate.
To your left, gold drips from the sky. You're spurred on by a gentle pressure at your back, to keep after Father Pevrel, to match his strides, to fear
nothing that the enemy puts your way. The shield in hand takes in blow after blow of lightless agony. Each hit gnaws away at the edges of the towering defense, and with it, it feels like a piece of you is consumed in the process.
Between the softening edges of the world and the relentless charge of your friend, there is a vivid streak of clarity. You can see the fabric of reality clearly. The forest you're in is more like a clearing. Every false tree that Father Pevrel is weaving around, each burst of darkness, and the way that the ground underfoot is still spinning is nothing but a cheap parlor trick. Over watered grass waves gently in the wind. The nearest enemy— a young man with a strip of dyed purple hair atop his otherwise bald head, wearing a billowing cloak made of plain brown linen— is far closer than what your ally expects.
Leaning into the Goddess of Healing, you push yourself to sprint ahead of the Lord of Wrath. The weight of each step might as well not matter. You are acutely aware of your presence on the field of battle— a wrecking ball of destruction, grinning maniacally as light and silver streaks from your eyes, casting aside your shield to manifest a garrote of transparent thread between your gold-streaked palms— but it does not matter, in terms of speed or survival.
A blast of shadow cleaves through the last of your shield. It explodes into a shower of light and glimmer as you pull ahead of Father Pevrel and tackle the first sorcerer you see to the ground.
Something snaps the second you land with your full weight on him.
A mad scuffle ensues for a matter of seconds.
As the Lord of Restraint and an
expert at close-quarters combat, you weave around the panicked man's attempts at defense.
His screams lance the air in the instant it takes Father Pevrel to turn on the spot, skidding to a stop before you, looking for the next target before you've even killed this one.
The sorcerer tries conjuring the illusion that you've been stabbed through the heart, frantically gesturing and screaming an incantation as you grapple with his wrists and neck. You grimace as nonexistent blood gushes over your robes and his gaunt face, slamming him into the mud. It's quick work for the Lord of Restraint to bind the fool's wrists behind his back, tying the silver thread swiftly around his neck, and using his own motions to dig the thread deeper and deeper against bulging arteries.
You give him one warning.
"Stay still."
Before the man realizes what he's doing, he's slit his own neck open against the gift of a Goddess. The trickle of blood against his neck becomes a violent spray. As violent as his attempts to thrash out from his razor-sharp bonds, to speak through the molten-hot tension on his vocal cords, to get out from the crushing pressure you've kept to his back as he's pinned into the dirt.
The heretic's motions slow. You ease up the pressure from behind his back, getting to your feet, and don't make out the last of his strangled gasps for air.
A sudden, devastatingly shrill cry resonates throughout the forest. From your gold-leafed orchard just down the way, a dozen birds take flight. Pain threatens to explode behind your eyes and from within your ears, but Mercy is on you and your ally faster than sound can travel.
Soft pressure sinks against your ears. The sound slowly winds down, while you and Father Pevrel leave behind your first victim, and run towards the source.
All the world's gone quiet (to your Mercifully dulled senses), but your fellow invoker gestures quickly and effortlessly, indicating for you to get in front of him, to put your shield back up, and to cover all sides of you if at all possible.
Though Mercy has muted the world, Spirit reveals waves of sound traveling through the air in haphazard directions. Massive swathes of grass and wood tremble from the force of it. The earth underfoot is vibrating, pulsing, and you can feel that all life for miles around has fled for their very lives.
The attacks of empty space and darkness suddenly redouble. You skid to a stop at the last possible second, ducking to slide under a huge void in reality. The gaping space in the air above you crackles with power.
Father Pevrel is right behind you, manages to keep low to the ground, and not only avoids the attack, but helps hoist you back to your feet as well.
You look around frantically, as your hyper-attunement to the earth has you recognize the next attack streaking through the grass not a second to late.
You turn hard towards the eruption of unnatural power and wind at your back. A wave of sound slams against the front of your shield. The force is so extreme, it blasts you and your ally fifteen feet backwards, clear off your feet.
You land flat on your back, winded and reeling. It feels like your organs have all ruptured. Excruciating pain carries throughout all of your body as you stay in the grass, dazed and unable to hear what Father Pevrel is screaming at you as he tries to get you up.
The world is cold.
The priest by your side doesn't wait for you to get your bearings. While your arm is slung over Father Pevrel's shoulder and he breaks back into a run— not giving a single shit about how you're responding to so much sensation at once— heat floods through your body. Mercy tenderly works over whatever nightmarish internal injury should have just killed you, mending your heart, your lungs, and every other delicate piece of you that should have taken the soul from your body.
The enemy has you clear in their sights. Giant, black holes appear in pockets throughout the grass. They are no illusion. The seemingly endless voids create a massively convoluted route towards what should have been the closest attacker— wasting precious seconds of your time.
Father Pevrel parts from holding you up for a split second, takes his sword in both hands, and swings Remorse from the heavens to the earth. In the wake of his blade comes a streak of razor-sharp night, that cleaves through the entire clearing. It lances from the air well above his head to the tree that is your destination— and chops the entire bough clean in half.
You never hear a cry from the figure that's killed in hiding, but you see their corpse slump to the ground. Blood pools behind the tree, as its trunk splits perfectly in half. The sound of its collapse never registers to your senses, either. Residual attacks from the sound sorcerer dissipate on the edges of the field— and it's only after the last of the blasts of noise have totally evaporated that your hearing returns to you in full.
A mad cackle trails across the forest. One Magic user has seen fit to try and still take you down, yet it would seem that the last of the illusionist's trees have faded. There's far fewer trees present, but an ocean of darkness between you and a single woman, on the opposite side of the woods from a lone cabin.
Your nose wrinkles as if you've crossed paths with a skunk. The woman's hair is shortly cropped, bright blonde and streaked with strips of black. She's wielding a colossal staff, no less than five feet in length, which is twisted with black twine and carvings so obscene that you can make out leering faces and crude depictions of men even from your distance. Her skirts are totally inert, her dark cape lying flat against her back, as if all the wind on earth has died. If you weren't mistaken, you'd say it looked like she was playing an instrument. There is no indication of her casting any spell, save for the occasional twitch of her hands as she runs long and slender fingers along her staff.
The gaping maws in the forest floor have created a path so narrow, you and Father Pevrel would have to walk single-file on it in order to safely traverse. Your enemy seems assured of her safety and upper-hand, while she continues to fling massive holes of empty space at you and your ally.
You're the Lord of Protection, and try not to laugh as you walk in a straight line towards the sorceress. Under every step you take comes a radius of solid gold. It provides a safe platform for you and Father Pevrel to sprint across, as your friend mimics your path perfectly. You sling your shield over one arm, paying no heed to the barrage of attacks pointed directly your way. It may feel like every hit is wearing at your soul itself, but you have greater concerns.
You take another strand of silver thread between your hands, gleefully spinning it with molten gold into a lengthy noose.
Father Pevrel makes several rapid slashes with Remorse, carving through the waves of darkness that are launched at your back with increasing speed and intensity.
Taking a single step backwards, the sorceress makes a massive sweep of her staff, bringing it before her feet. The earth opens up between the three of you.
You wind up and throw the noose of your Goddesses' design at the woman, catching her off-guard as Father Pevrel hurls a series of volcanic daggers at her face. Most of the blades are absorbed and vanish within more portals to nothingness, but one lands true, plunging deeply into the woman's shoulder.
She gasps obscenely, leering at Father Pevrel before turning her focus towards him.
The transparent rope you threw lands soundly around her slender neck. With all the strength you possess, you pull fast on the thread, yanking your target to the ground.
Confused and terrified, the sorceress lets out a shriek, bringing up her staff to attack rather than to try and free herself in any capacity.
With a running start, Father Pevrel launches himself from the narrow strip of forest he's occupying, clear across the void the sorceress created, and lands soundly right next to the enemy.
Wide, blue eyes look up to the Lord of Execution. She can barely talk through the molten metal searing into her neck, but the lunatic manages a few last words.
"You're
already too late!"
Remorse pierces through the sorceress' face, straight through one of those baby-blue eyes into the back of her neck. With a grunt, Father Pevrel twists his blade, ripping the woman's face messily in half.
Blood splatters across the ground, coating the lower half of the priest in blood. Her body goes slack.
Silence pervades the woods.
There's still massive swathes of nothingness between you and your ally, moments after their creator has died. The path to the little cabin in the woods is at least three times longer than it was before. Father Pevrel screams at you.
"FUCK! Just go!"
You look to the building through the eyes of a Goddess— and from what you can tell, where there were once two figures inside of the building, there is now only one. The other sorcerer must have escaped.
Lying inert on the floor, deep within the topmost level of the building is what you know must be an heretic. A killer. A fiend.
It's your boy.
You break into a dead sprint, leaving Father Pevrel on the little island in the forest, surrounded by voids that you're certain will fade in due time. The path you take is a straight shot. You know you're probably already too late, but you have to hope.
Despite your urgency, something feels terribly wrong about this building. It's not just gut instinct that makes your steps falter, as you approach the small and humble cabin. It's just a little over one story tall, with enough room for an attic if you squint. The topmost windows are boarded, and there's no motion you detect from within, but you have two Goddesses of Truth working through you, and insight Herself is trying to give you Time for caution.
>A ROLL WILL BE REQUIRED FOR ALL OF THE FOLLOWING.
>A] You've already taken too much Time. Make a bee-line for Serpent. You'll do everything in your power to save him, no matter what obstacles have been placed in your way.
>B] You have a terrible feeling about this cabin. Ignore the front door, go get Father Pevrel (for his safety and help) and climb in through another entrance.
>C] Drop your invocation of Spirit. Dual invoke Agriculture alongside Mercy— to break into this building without disturbing any entrances or exits, while still possessing the power to heal your boy.
>D] The Goddess of Insight is granting you a split second to think about how you approach what is obviously a trap. Honor Her, and use your head. (Write-in.)
