Marching On

We’re back!

I was happy to see lamenting in the comments for poor Ruby!

——-

I was panting when I finally put the crop away. So was Sapphire the ragged, deep breaths of the defeated and tortured. She hungry limply from her chains now, her body covered in thin welts, combining to make a lovely lattice pattern across her skin. I grabbed her by the chin and lifted her head up to look at me. “You’re gonna fight.” There was no avoiding it, no arguing with it.

“Yes.” She sighed, letting her head to her chest.

That very well could have been a lie, if not for…

Sapphire +2 Cp (-21 corruption)

"Let her down." I say aloud, only just realizing that I'd put Cyrus in charge of the prison. Still Steelowyn's blessing of this place seemed to give me some command over it. My voice caused the shackles to snap open and drop Sapphire onto the ground. She just lets herself lay there, and I can't blame her. Her body must have been throbbing from the exercise, and who knows the state of her mind?

I walk over to the rack holding her staff and toss it on the ground before her. Her robes were ripped to shreds thanks to me, so it looked like she'd be fighting naked. That was a proud tradition among our kind.

I then walked to the door."Things seemed to have quieted down out there." I caught Melli staring at me. "What?"

She quickly looked away, and said nothing. I had half a mind to start whipping her there, but we'd already lost enough time.

"Open the door." I commanded one of the goblins. It nodded and cracked the door open. He immediately gagged, and then dropped dead on the floor. "Fuck!" I lunged forward and kicked the door shut, just as tendrils of purple vapor began curling into the room. I threw my cloak over my face, and backed away but already my head was swimming and I felt drowsy.

Everyone scurried to the back of the prison, and soon the sound of snoring echoed around the space.

"He's not dead." I yawned, and looked at the goblin by the door. "It's a sleeping poison." That made sense Celeste didn't want to kill Daliah. Which didn't help us at all. It just gave Celeste the grim job of stabbing us all through the skull as we slept.

Luckily I'd been preparing for something like this.

I began to fiddle with my cape, and produced a large jar of black goo.

"What's that?" Melli eyed me curious as I started prepping the contents of the jar.

"This..." I said with a sigh. "Is what I was working on before you and the twins joined us." The slime from the midnight pool, I'd planned to dedicate the whole night working with it but got kind of distracted by sex.

Classic.

"Okay." Melli said slowly. "So what is it?"

Celeste

More I'll omens, more reasons to turn back.

The foe's hideout was alive, and interestingly enough it was alive with constructs. Beings immune to my poisons, which produced no scent. My little bombers sailed right over them, these shadows and struck the juicer targets within. That was a charming little event, that was completely unplanned by me.

In fact I was quite surprised when shadows came out of the walls to seize and strike me.

My armor of course protected me, and we quickly dispatched with the foes. Still, it was a concerning surprise. It just went to show how little I knew about the foe, or the realm which he hid.

It was exciting!

The exploration!

The **** of the unknown.

Here I was a warrior for enlightenment literally delving into the cave of ignorance to bring forth knowledge, and treasures untold.

I pity the foes who delved into this place unprepared. I'd done quite a bit of prep work for this dive, and I'd come up defenseless against so much. These shadows were tricky, and hard to spot. My sense of smell was deactivated just in case I came against miss stinky again, but even then I wouldn't be able to detect them. It would have been an interesting puzzle, but I was far beyond it at this point. I could simply muscle through their tangled weave.

Three rooms of these vague creatures I had to deal with. They were simple defeat for me, but I appreciated the vision of their employment. The foe sought to drain my resources before taking me on. A good plan when dealing with a more powerful foe, but alas a failed one. I'd not spent a single resource moving through the dungeon, neither star nor potion.

More's the pity for my opponent.

I could take solace in the fact that they'd perhaps underestimated me, more than I'd underestimated them.

The Herald

It was an interesting sensation breathing through the slime. The lot of us, the witches, goblins, and I hissed through the protrusions of our masks. Each of us had our heads drenched in the vicious black fluid from the midnight pool. Thanks to Celeste's advice I was able to get the slime to hold a shape around our heads. Kind of, it wasn't perfect yet, and felt more like we were wearing wet towels than a sheath of solid armor like I wanted. But the important thing did work, and that was that the waters of the midnight pool preserved whatever what within it's form. This property continued with the slime I'd created from the waters.

In short I'd managed to find a way to protect us all from the poison flooding my dungeon. It was just uncomfortable, smelled weird, and cost a good bit of our visions to wear as well. We had to peer out of these bubbles in the slime that were thinner than the rest. We all looked like awful frog creatures, but it beat looking like a corpse.

We'd exited the prison to survey the carnage that had taken place in the cathedral. The clockwork shoulders, and the vampire were all still chilling. Unbothered by the flying exploding creatures due to their lack of scent. The floor of the cathedral was littered with blood, giblets and bodies. Ruby's pale body stood out amongst the other greenier forms. Sapphire and Melli each whimpered when they saw the thing, and who could blame them?

I looked away in shame and searched for Cyrus's shield to identify his body, but could not find it anywhere. Indeed the orc, ogre and a few goblins were still unaccounted for. They must have run and regrouped on the second floor, and it it occurred to me that we should do the same.

The girls were crying, and I felt so cold. I'd only met Ruby the day before, but I felt such a sense of loss and guilt. It was so wrong. I served an evil god. **** and sacrifice had been something I'd been raised with, I'd killed people before. Melli's friends, the guards at the caravan, that cleric in my experiments, but those were foes. Ruby had been a friend, and I'd killed her as surely as anything. And it all felt so useless. There was no glory or service in her ****, just an awful bloody end. If there's just been a tree in the road, or a storm it all could have been avoided. Melli and the others would have been a date late, and I'd be left to face Celeste alone.

"Herald?" Melli's voice reached through to me, though I'd been lost in my own thoughts.

"What?" I looked up, but she didn't need to repeat herself.

Celeste had entered the Cathedral.