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53- Blood In The Water
🕑 Added 2025-08-04 05:45:54 +0000 UTCInquisitor Vanessa Sky- Hopes Hold, Capitol Of The Eastmarch Dutchy
Vanessa leaned back in the opulent dark wooden chair, embracing the luxury she so often went without. Duke Darmit was many things, but a bad host wasn’t one of them. The war room she was in had beautifully lacquered wooden walls so dark they were almost black, matching the massive table she sat around with other important figures.
The Duke, in all his fancy drapery with his always cruel, predatory expression, sat at the head of the table; to his right was Archbishop Candor, his simple robes and that forced calm look he always carried contrasting with their host's frantic eyes and gaudy clothes almost comically. Vanessa knew how fake that facade the archbishop exuded was; he was one of the most wrathful people she had ever met. Dotted around the rest of the table were a few paladin commanders and important military members of the duchy.
Of course on her right was Arthur, her new apprentice. The boy looked like he was sculpted from contemplative marble, with eyes far too keen and sad to go with the rest of his near-perfect warrior image and a heart that may be too soft in the end for her kind of work. To her left was her existing apprentice, a skinny young man with black curls and an immaculate, nondescript black and grey jerkin and trousers. If you looked closely, though, you could see how he smirked at every insult, and his expression lifted just the slightest with the mere mention of violence. Slev was a vicious, brilliant protégé, but if he didn’t learn to channel his darker impulses, she was going to have to kill him one of these days. Hells, she might have already if he wasn’t one of the only other Sanctuary Breakers in existence.
Her musing was broken as the archbishop personally unfurled a map across the table depicting Hopes End and the poorly charted Forsaken lands adjoining it. The bishop began with a cool, collected tone, hiding the hatred in his words with honeyed tones. “The crusade has begun.” He paused to let the words roll across the room.
“We will not make the mistakes of the last crusade; the first wave of scouts has already entered the forsaken lands to chart paths for the paladins. Only when we have a plan of action that will let us decisively shove the border back with a single definitive purge will we act.” The archbishop paused, scanning the assembly to see if anyone had anything to add; when no one did, he continued.
“Thanks to the efforts of the inquisition” He paused, nodding in Vanessa’s direction. “We know that the hive of scum in Hopes End will almost certainly actively resist us; in fact, they seem to have a loose plan of simply stalling us long enough for the king to be unable to intervene, but...even with how fast the border is retreating at its current pace, we have a full year before that would become a reality. The scouts should be able to trim the fat, so to say, enough that the border never reaches their doorstep.” The archbishop paused and took a slow sip of a fine crimson wine before gesturing towards Vanessa.
Vanessa stood, her facade sweeping across the assembled leaders; most flinched under her gaze. A rare few in the paladin order managed to hold her gaze with stalwart resilience. Once she was sure everyone realized who she was, she began. “This cannot be a war of attrition. Last time the paladins stormed into Hopes End and tried to live in a hostile town while the Forsaken Lands slowly bled them dry and the locals smelled blood in the water. You all may jest about how they are godless fools and backwater yokels.” She paused for effect, looking directly at the few who had gotten smiles at the slanderous comments.
“It doesn’t matter what you think of them; what matters is what happens when they find a bedraggled, injured squad of paladins in the woods near their home—they won’t offer aid, they won’t call for help. They will execute them on the spot and bury them in a shallow grave. That’s assuming they don’t simply follow them into the woods to hunt them down. They may be godless backwater heretics, but they aren’t weak. If we try and drag this out again, they will bleed us dry and suck on the marrow.” The table shifted uncomfortably, with quite a few of the paladin commanders looking openly insulted.
She stared down the few who looked like they wanted to interject but didn’t dare. “Mad? Good, that's better than careless. We do not want this to turn into an open fight for many reasons; the only one you need to remember is simple: You ,Will ,Fucking, Die.” There were outbursts at that, with multiple heavily decorated warriors interjecting over each other.
She slammed her hand on the table; the slight flash of mana accompanying it found those foolish enough to interject clawing at their throats in panic as the air from their lungs slowly crept out. “I’m not done.” She growled out and then let the men gag for an uncomfortably long time before releasing them with the twitch of a finger.
“Who here knows who the cleric is? I’ve heard many of you joke that he is an upjumped worshiper of dark gods; the truth is worse.” She paused, looking around to see if anyone would answer her. To no surprise, everyone at the table looked too frightened except the Archbishop, who looked like he was seething, and the Duke, who was hanging on her every word.
“He was the apprentice of the current Lord Commander of the paladin order... Let that fucking sink in. Now imagine that he isn't the only person there that dangerous…because he isn't. That town is filled with killers, adventurers, and failed geniuses that went to the darkest corner they could find of this blessed empire to hide and fester.”
She paused once again and then continued in a soft voice, “Then there is this supposed Paladin of the Forsaken Lands.” Arthur next to her stiffened, clutching the edge of the table so hard it splintered slightly; the lanterns in the room angrily flared for a moment. “Even I am not sure exactly who he is...yet…” She lied boldly, “But he will almost certainly be waiting for you out there...you have all heard the rumors; I think the truth may be worse.” She sat down looking like she was done with her speech.
She began again, surprising those in the room who had relaxed some. “Now for my part I have much more important tasks to do for the church than this thinly veiled gold grab. I will lend you my apprentices; Arthur will join the scouts in the spearhead of weakening the lands, and Slev will do what he does best and worm his way into town, finding the weak spots for us to exploit.” The room broke into quiet clusters of conversation as the planning began in earnest.
Vraxious- The Forsaken Lands
The Soul Render Sentinel above Vrax was an unfathomably vile thing, shaped like a stretched-out man with a distended belly. The stomach was torn open by a stinking, oozing mouth crowded with hooked teeth big enough for him to walk into. The neck was too long and held the single massive eye on top in place of any real head. The arms were far too long with too many fingers, all of them mismatching, and it had a thin tail that whipped back and forth endlessly. But the worst part was its thin red skin; it was overtly loose in places, too tight in others, and rotted through in massive patches everywhere, exposing muscle and organs beneath.
Well, I don’t think I can afford to hold back. Vrax didn’t move toward the Sentinel; instead, he summoned his garden around him like a private guard. The lurker behind him to cover his rear from any grubs that escaped the tornado of violence behind him. Both Retriever hives in front to tangle the monstrosity, and on either side of him the new dandelion variant within arm's reach. The drain effect of the stigmata was dramatic in this corpse-filled room, liquefying nearly a foot of the vile carpet across a vast swath of the cavern as his creations sprouted from the mire.
The new dandelions were very different, rising to Vrax’s waist with a singular dandelion seed the size of a man’s torso on top. The spider-like limbs now looked more like the finest crafted razor blades with joints organically forged into them; they were still connected by a transparent gossamer film similar to wings. The center of the seed now held deep empty eye sockets and strange budding protrusions the size of a closed fist. Both of them rose from the stems in a smooth, sudden motion, plucking themselves with a slight pop before letting out a low, airy moan as they sensed the prey before them.
The Sentinel suddenly lashed at Vrax and a retriever hive simultaneously, its eye locked onto the hive, and the rotten gore around it rose in a steaming tide, inundating the hive in liquid flesh so hot that the retrievers flash-cooked mid-leap, falling limply to the ground a stride from the melting hive. Its tail snapped deceptively far between its legs and landed squarely on Vrax’s leg. A haze of magic, such a dark green it was almost black, sprung to life a finger-span from Vrax’s armor, deflecting the blow away with a muted crack. Several of the nearby squirming things on the walls melted to sludge as the armor used them as fuel for the barrier.
Vrax dropped flat, dodging a strange sweep of the thing's squirming arm; the retrievers flew outwards, wrapping around the limb before it could fully pull back. The two Dandelions leapt high into the air from their perches atop the stem and began sailing towards the Sentinel at a lazy, unhurried pace, making excited moaning noises as they flew.
The sentinel Surging forward, flinging gore with every step as it thrashed towards Vrax in a wild, uncoordinated assault, the retrievers on its arm stripped the meaty flesh from it, falling free one by one, accompanied by massive hunks of muscle and skin, as the creature desleeved its own arm in its assault. It didn’t even seem to notice as its arm was reduced to an awful protruding bundle of nerves with meat hanging from it; the bundle writhed horribly even without anything but scraps attached.
It locked its eye onto Vrax. Just as the dandelions drifted to land near its open mouth. The ground around Vrax bubbled as flesh steamed and bone melted, being superheated by some horrid skill. He flared his stigmata garden, dumping everything he still had in it to rot the surrounding meat before it could surge over him. Fucking, fuck, fuck! How do I kill this thing?
The now unleashed cascading dandelions immediately began dancing through the battlefield, and the Maneater he had plopped next to him ran off backwards towards the grubs being savaged by the improved lurker. The acidic lurker was killing grubs by the tens; it had a mound of them pulled against its limbs, being gutted as well as melted, while it snatched render after render and pressed them against its centipede-like stem.
Vrax stumbled past a swing from the nerve rope hanging from the creature's arm; the retrievers had clutched onto it mid-chest and kept falling around him in showers of flesh. Vrax pushed an irresponsible amount of mana into Smite and leapt upwards, pushing a column of necrotic energy into the creature's chest, opening a gaping hole out to the other side. Still, there were no signs of bones or any vital organs.
[Mana 63/163]
The Sentinel simply smiled madly with its maw again, pausing briefly in apparent confusion as the two Dandelions clambered down its front and slipped between gaps in its teeth, climbing straight inside its mouth. The cascading dandelions flying around the room were starting to affect it as well, and the occasional flash of green light pulsed under its skin. It went to strike at Vrax again when a gullet diver dandelion ripped its way out of its leg, sending it stumbling mid-swing. Then clambered back to and into its mouth. The other ripped free from its torso a second later, moaning as it reoriented itself and climbed back into the mouth itself.
Vrax used the distraction to back farther away; the hive was stripping more and more flesh from this thing, exposing what almost looked like the outline of a human in braided nerve ropes in place of any bones. Then all at once the spider-like Gullet Divers burst free—four of them this time. The Sentinel was starting to have more missing parts than whole ones. The retrievers fully shucked another limb, tearing it to the ground as its right leg was nearly amputated.
Vrax stepped back farther. Okay, gullet divers…let’s see if this does what I think it will. They burst free again, this time with eight of them moaning as they slashed their way free, and then only a few seconds later with sixteen of them. After that, it turned into a swarm as the creature was brutally ripped apart from the inside by the ever-growing horde that marched back into its mouth each time to lay its seeds and start again in an endless cycle.
Even barely visible under the writhing swarm of dandelions, the thing still twitched and flailed the ground around it bubbled violently, and it washed itself in steaming gore, cooking dozens of dandelions alive. Then it fell still. Please be dead…please be dead…
Torvald yelled from the other side of the cave, “Fucking smashed it!” Vrax spared a glance over. Torvald was covered in fine slice marks and standing next to Sunshine, who was trying to eat the few grubs still able to move in the vicinity. One collector was a chewed-on spatter mark against the far wall; Vrax couldn’t even see remains from the second one. Sunshine probably fucking ate it.
Vrax turned back to his foe awaiting the flow of essence; instead, the remains ahead of him quivered as the bundle of nerves in the shape of a man slid free from its meaty shell and turned its half-bisected eye towards him. “Holy fucking shit, Torvald... Help, please! This thing won’t fucking die!”
You know…. It would have been fucking fantastic if my Guardian beast wasn’t such an asshole and had decided to help.
Comments
Beeees!
At some point for sure. I bet they put his sanctuary under siege first and Torvalds breaking it and Vrax defending it let's both of em advance at the same time
Daniel C Williams
I have the sneaking suspicion that this Slev fellow is going to try and fight Vrax from inside his Sanctuary... and die horrifically for his troubles.
