Cornman8700
patreon
MT 311 - Bloody Perfection
🕑 Added 2025-10-07 11:05:40 +0000 UTC“He isn’t a psychopath,” said Ember, with a dangerous look in her eye.
“Arlo,” said Drift. “That isn’t a very kind way to characterize someone else’s chosen deity.” I scrutinized Drift’s mild look of disapproval, then took a mental step back and thought about what I’d just said.
“Okay, I can see how calling someone’s god a psychopath could be deeply offensive to a person who worships that god.” I opened my mouth for the next part of that statement, but Ishi’s eyebrow went up a touch and I hesitated. She stepped close and threaded her arm through mine. A few nonverbal cues went between us, and I calmed down before making a total mess of things.
“Chalgoth tried to kill me,” I said. I waved a hand at Drift. “He tried to kill Varrin, tried to kill the whole party. I’m sorry, Ember, if you found my words insulting, but I have an unkind history with that god.”
“Oh,” said the archer triplet, nodding to herself. “How did he challenge you?”
“Challenge me?”
“Blood and steel is a mistranslation of his aspects,” she said. “It’s technically correct, but missing a lot of context. Chalgoth is more like a god of personal perfection. He helps his worshipers achieve a desired state through a type of instruction.”
“You think he was instructing me?” I asked. “I don’t think he was instructing me. I never asked to be instructed.”
“He wouldn’t just try and kill you without reason,” she said, an annoyed look crossing her features. I’d never known Ember to be a paragon of patience, but I still found myself bristling at her jump to irritation.
“It sure felt like an unprovoked attack. It certainly had the appearance of carrying lethal consequences.”
She crossed her arms. “What form did he take? What was it called?”
I rubbed at my brow, knowing I’d regret this admission. “It was a Malformed Icon of Instruction.”
“See?!” said Ember, throwing her hands out in exasperation. “He literally took the form of instruction and you think he wasn’t instructing you?”
I was doing my level best to stay tranquil, serene, undisturbed, buuuuuut…
I failed.
“No!” I shouted. “He turned into a fucking flesh tendril thing and tried to suck out all our blood and shit! He was there to ‘instruct’ his stupid fucking paladin who’d already tried to kill us and whose ass we’d already kicked and who sacrificed his own fucking allies as an offering to Chalgoth so that the god could show him how he could have been more effective at murdering us! And the whole time he kept moaning about how much he wanted me and it was. Fucking. Weird!”
“Let’s take a break,” said Ishi. She shared a look with Drift, who nodded and began shepherding Ember in the other direction. Ishi led me off to a corner, then looked me over with concern. “You okay?” she asked.
I leaned up against the wall, then rested the back of my head against its cool surface. “That struck a nerve in a way I wasn’t expecting. I honestly didn’t realize I had such strong feelings about fucking Chalgoth of all things.”
“It sounds like you see him as an enemy.”
“Well, yeah,” I said. “I take it personally when someone comes into my home and tries to execute me and all my closest friends.”
“What do you think about Ember’s claim, though?” she asked, moving to lean up against the wall next to me. She scooched close enough for our arms to touch.
“What? That Chalgoth was ‘instructing’ me? I think it’s bullshit. Even if we assume that the god’s Icon wasn’t trying to kill me, then it was, at best, trying out some kind of demented recruitment pitch.”
“Hmm,” Ishi hummed, giving us both some more time to mull the question–and my response–over.
“Do you think she’s right?” I asked.
“I’ve no idea,” said Ishi. “But does it matter? It’s okay to be angry over the way Chalgoth approached things, even if he meant it to be helpful in a disturbed sort of manner.”
“Sure,” I said. “I just can’t wrap my head around hearing all this from Ember.”
“It isn’t like the two of you are very close,” said Ishi. “You both have some shared trauma, but you see each other once a year at most.”
“Well, now I feel like a shitty friend.”
Ishi tapped my chest with a knuckle. “Stop that. No pity party. Ember’s here, now. If you want to keep her closer, there she is.”
I sighed and straightened up off the wall. “Okay. Friends don’t blaspheme against each other’s chosen deities.”
“That’s probably a good rule,” said Ishi.
“But… do friends schedule interventions when one of them suddenly starts worshipping a dark god?”
“Who do your revelations come from again?” Ishi asked rhetorically. “Sam’lia is widely considered to have several ‘dark’ qualities.”
“Dammit, fine.” I spent another few minutes chatting with Ishi while she performed an expert job of calming me down. Drift was having a similar chat with Ember, and when the two of us met back in the middle of the firing range, some sincere apologies were traded. We both agreed to consider the other person’s experiences with Chalgoth while keeping an open mind.
“Okay, you went into the Divine Dungeon,” I said.
“Right,” Ember replied.
“Chalgoth was there, willing to take you on as a student.”
“Yeah.”
“So, how did Chalgoth ‘instruct’ you?”
“He tried to kill me.”
“Oh, come on!”
Ember gave me a cheeky grin, then fell back into her usual, more serious demeanor. “We talked philosophy during walks through the realm he’d created for me, and I shot a million arrows.”
“Like a metaphorical million, or…”
“Literally, a million arrows.”
“You were there for six months?”
“Yes.”
“That means you’d have to have fired an arrow every fifteen seconds without any breaks. No sleeping, no thirty-minute lunches, nothing.”
“I had breaks,” she said. “The speed I was firing varied a lot, depending on what I was aiming at, but I probably fired an arrow every second for about one hour a day. Then the rest of the time I was able to take more considered shots. I got plenty of sleep.”
“Okay, philosophy and some marksmanship doesn’t sound too bad,” I said.
“I had to craft the arrows by removing my own bones and shaping them into the shafts.”
“Ah, that sounds more like it.”
“I did the same with the bow itself. I found that my hamstrings worked best for the bowstring. Before you ask, Chalgoth always grew it all back. Then I learned to live while circulating my blood outside of my body for a few weeks. Once I’d mastered the use of my body as a weapon, Chalgoth tore my flesh apart down to its most fundamental components, then rebuilt it while I watched.”
I took a few seconds so that I and everyone else who wasn’t Ember could process that. “How did you watch your own body be torn apart and rebuilt?” I asked. “Did it happen piecemeal, like your eyes were spared at first so you’d get a good look or something?”
“I experienced it through Chalgoth’s mercy with my soul as the lens.”
“I see,” I said, not seeing at all. Divine Magic could be weird.
Ishi took this opportunity to reinsert herself into the conversation. She’d gracefully given Ember and I time to steer the conversation ourselves while we reconciled, but this was still a tryout for Team Princess.
“What were the returns on spending six months in a Dungeon?” Ishi asked.
“Both my Divine Magic and Marksmanship intrinsic skills reached Level 70.”
I whistled. “Varrin’s the only member of Fortune’s Folly to have a Level 70 intrinsic. It’s in Blades, and he’s got an actual passive skill called Blade Prodigy. Having two at Delver Level 17 is damn impressive.”
“What level were you when you left Chalgoth’s Divine Dungeon?” asked Ishi.
“I was still Level 10.”
“Well, fuck,” I said cheerily. “Two Level 70 intrinsics at Delver Level 10 is fucking stupid.”
“It is,” said Ember, nodding her agreement. “I thought I understood what it meant, what kind of power it gave me, but I didn’t truly comprehend it. I’m pretty sure that’s why Chalgoth dropped me into a Labyrinth.”
“Did he place you in a party?” asked Ishi.
“No,” said Ember. “I did the Labyrinth solo, and claimed seven of the eight obelisks.”
That claim raised some yellow flags for me. “Labyrinths can have other Delvers inside,” I said, carefully keeping my tone neutral. “Did you run into anyone?”
“Yeah, there were three other parties,” said Ember. “All Timans. The space where I arrived was empty. The Labyrinth was filled with traps and horrors, the same as any Delve, but worse. Trickier, more lethal. Stranger. I tried to approach the first group I encountered to see if we could work together. I cared more about survival than getting anything out of the Labyrinth, but the Timans didn’t react well to me. Things got unfriendly, some attacks came my way, but nothing I couldn’t avoid.
“I ended up tracking them from a distance, trying to stay in the wake they cleared through the Labyrinth. They eventually clashed with a different party, and a couple from each team got picked off by monsters while they quarrelled. I snuck past while they were trying to kill each other, since it seemed like their fight was going to draw in even more monsters, and I grabbed the obelisk they were fighting over. That’s when they started hunting me.”
“Why take the risk of exposing yourself?” asked Ishi.
“To get out,” Ember replied. “Every time someone claims a Labyrinth obelisk, an exit portal appears. It’s open for a limited time, and you can use it to escape or stay inside and take your chances. The Labyrinth tries to keep you there with tiered rewards based on the number of obelisks you get, but my goal with stealing the obelisk was just to activate a portal and leave.
“Before I could, one of the Timans blocked the portal exit with a skill that summoned a giant, gooey ball.” She shook her head. “What a stupid skill. I’m still mad that it worked. At that point, both groups decided to put their differences aside to kill me, and I escaped deeper into the Labyrinth. Eventually, they boxed me in, and I was forced to defend myself.” Ember shrugged. “After that, there was only one other team inside.”
She gave us a defiant look and waited, likely to see if we’d toss any judgment her way. Ishi simply motioned for her to continue, and I was happy to let it go without any moralizing commentary. Ember had been there. I hadn’t. I was fine accepting the self-defense argument.
The archer let out a breath and picked her story back up.
“I was so deadly to everything I encountered that I decided to keep claiming obelisks. The Delver levels were fine, but the other rewards made it worth the risk. I didn’t encounter the final group of Timans for some time, and they got at least one obelisk. It seemed like their progress was really slow, but when I found them at their second, they’d shoved themselves into a hole and fortified it with skills to escape a big slug thing. It seemed like it was waiting them out. They’d been trapped there for days when I killed it, and they thanked me for the rescue by handing me the obelisk and item rewards. Then they left through the portal that opened, leaving me alone inside. After that, clearing the rest of the place was trivial.”
“You mentioned the rewards got better the more obelisks that you claimed,” said Ishi. “Seven of eight obelisks must have yielded a potent reward.”
Ember gestured up and down at herself. “I’ll need to shoot something to show you the best thing I got. It’s a body-mod substance that mixed well with my revelations. They all build on each other. I don’t have a legendary sword or anything that I can break out and point at.”
The way Ember mentioned that she had revelations, plural, was like it was no big deal. Ishi took immediate interest, of course, and her wooden armor began to grow around her body. “I’m eager to see it,” she said. “Let’s move on to our spar.”
Ember held up her hands. “No offense is meant, Princess, but I’d rather not risk shooting you.”
“I’m quite durable,” Ishi replied, floating her bow from inventory.
“So were all the Labyrinth bosses that I one-shot.”
Ishi hesitated with her staff, fingers lingering without releasing it to her telekinesis. “Then what do you suggest?”
“Maybe there’s a target I can hit?” Ember looked around the range before her eyes settled on me. “I’m sure you’ve got something pretty durable.”
“Uhhhh, let me check with Grotto.”
Ten minutes later, we had one of the Etja-clone golems standing down range. It wore a full suit of mana-dampening dark iron armor and held Grotto’s second-best shield up in front of it. A quick check showed it as being Grade 23. It’d be impressive if Ember could poke the golem through all its defenses, but I was hoping to see some serious damage, given her claims.
Ember removed her doublet and tossed it into her inventory, leaving only a band of fabric wrapping her powerful upper body. Her musculature rolled easily under the skin like a lion at rest–one that had just spotted its prey. Grotto hovered beside us in his little man form, willing to be present so he could observe the attack and possibly glean some potential improvements for his Golemancy.
“You may fire when ready,” he said.
Ember went from unarmed and unarmored to being wreathed in bloody plate mail and splitting the golem apart in a second.
Veins all over Ember’s body opened, and blood poured out from her, thick and viscous. It wrapped every inch of her body while the flesh of her left arm exploded outward, silvery bones forming the limbs and grip of a bow, tendons pulling tight between them. From her right wrist, an arrow erupted from her skin to deposit itself between her fingers, even as she drew back in a fluid motion. The blood finished coating her frame and instantly hardened into thick armor.
Her draw was at the apex of its power as the blood settled, her entire body taut beneath ungodly levels of tension. For the briefest moment, she held her aim, and a vile power gathered at the arrow’s head. When Ember released her shot, the air thundered, and the golem ceased to exist.
I could just barely follow the impact of the projectile. The bone arrow passed through the shield and dead center of the golem’s chest, leaving only a small hole behind, which rippled out into a fracturing wave. The shield buckled and sheared into pieces. The golem’s ribcage became a spray of fine particles while its limbs were thrown aside with such force that they were torn asunder.
As the body parts sprayed across the backside of the firing range, they struck with enough force against the reinforced stone to be reduced to a fine paste, which was then further annihilated as a wave of nauseating power flooded through the golem’s body in the arrow’s wake. Everything was rendered down to a darkly-colored goo, with even the twisted remains of the shield and a part of the wall behind melting away into a puddle.
The string of Ember’s bow had only begun thrumming from her release by the time the golem’s body and all of its equipment were nothing more than a moist splatter across a hundred feet of the range. A soft touch of her fingertip ceased the string’s vibration with an impossible, instant stillness. Ember released a breath, then lowered her weapon.
The bow folded back into her arm like a crustacean hiding away in its shell, her skin and armor closing over top of it like the weapon had never existed in the first place.
Comments
yohan gu
Mm, FF got a challenger there. Get to work on your intrinsics, Arlo!
ArtHunt
New favorite God
Xultanis
Makes sense now why Chalgoth wanted Arlo. With abilities like that, using your own body as a weapon, Arlo's Body of Theseus and insane health regen would make him a prime candidate for Chalgoth style shenanigans.
Ers20
Gods are such cheaters.
Levi
That was a great chapter. Thanks 🌽 man
ValkyriaObscura
Welp. That was awesome. Don't blame Arlo for his initial misgivings though
Throh_goblin Lord
should I be entranced or worried?
Throh_goblin Lord
I second this
Brandon Yarberry
I'm scaroused.
