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310 - Apotheosis in the Garden of Flesh [Sturmblitz]
🕑 Added 2023-10-11 02:25:27 +0000 UTCThe tormented cries of thousands, a unified scream, blasted out from the city center, and Zelsys didn’t just hear them, she felt them. Both Carnifex and her own right arm resonated at the sound, in the same exact tones given off by the Skinless One’s Token when she had used it as a hammer.
A wave of crimson light washed over the whole city. Each and every survivor counted among the enemy’s number suddenly sprung up with renewed vigor, their auras blazing thrice as brightly as they had at their previous peaks. Even those among them who had been mutilated beyond recognition, yet within whom some spark of life still dwelt, were dragged back from the brink, twisted into new forms by the careless hand of this unholy energy.
As for Zelsys and all those affiliated with the Newman Sect, its passing was like a wave of boiling blood that left neither burns nor filth in its wake, but still created an all-encompassing sense of impurity. Zelsys, Zefaris, and Victor all felt an uncanny familiarity in it: It reminded all three of them of the rubedo lake they had encountered on their journey to the north. Comparing this revolting outburst to that place, however ,was like comparing a tsunami to a small stagnant pool.
Friedrich was dead.
He had stopped moving just before the outburst, and now that the wave had passed, he was stone-still, his body frozen in the resolute stance immediately preceding the Dambreaker Cannon technique. His skin was like baked red clay, and he stood, inexorably baked to the bridge.
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A short time earlier, atop the Eberheim Cathedral…
The Third Truthseeker, fully aware of Friedrich’s sacrifice, rushed through the final preparations, driven half by urgency and half by grief for the loss of one of the few individuals he considered trustworthy. Entirely absorbed by the complex mental rituals necessary, he was shut off from the outside world, a half-step from total blindness as far as anything outside the belfry was concerned; such was the singular focus the preparations demanded. It was an inherent vulnerability that came with this rite… But there were still things he could sense, so bright and distinct they pierced into his awareness.
One among these was the flaring beacon of Friedrich’s Blood Implosion Holocaust technique. Third had been, after all, the one to adapt it so that it would work for Friedrich, he had been the one to work out the eldritch formulae behind it, he had created the mutagens that altered Friedrich’s blood and cardiovascular system to form his entire body into a living sacrificial circle… But he also knew of a possible method by which his life could be saved. His body would die, that much was certain, and his spirit core would pass onto but a part of Friedrich would live on as part of Third’s cultivation.
He would come out with a smaller gain, but as far as he was concerned, a loss of efficiency in the ritual was a worthwhile sacrifice.
The Third Truthseeker rang the bell, chanting a call to the Skinless One, offering up the unworthy lives of the mortals within the sacrificial circle. In truth, however, it was a double-sided incantation. Using ancient Ankhezian, the incantation gave lip service to the god while using euphemism and double-speak to effectively tell the Dead God to do what was needed, but not an iota more, to not interfere in the rite. It was the Order’s own meticulous work that powered the ritual, a fractured and restored version of the Creation of a Great Man ritual circle. Third considered it a blessing that they had not discovered a complete version, as the Order’s version, the Order’s rite, had a distinct advantage: The beneficiary would remain fully himself, and the subjects did not need to be even slightly willing. The Creation of a Great Man ritual, by contrast, remade the beneficiary into a new being, and the sacrifices had to be willing to offer up their lives. Sure, the efficiency was a fraction of the original with fewer than several hundred sacrifices, but mortal lives were not hard to come by.
With a final strike upon the bell, Third felt the shockwave travel down the many fleshy tendrils connected to it. He smiled as he heard the screams. Without hesitation, he plunged the sacrificial blade into his own heart and began a complex dance, twisting his body in impossible ways, joints popping and bending in ways impossible for any mortal. As he danced, so too did he sing, mimicking the Skinless One’s throaty, warbling tone.
It was this method which would let him take control of the rising spiritual tsunami via the glyph in whose middle he stood.
SIGN OF MASS SACRIFICE
WHEN MADE PART OF AN IMMORTAL BEING
THE LIVES OF MAYFLIES ARE GIVEN WORTH
APOTHEOSIS IN THE GARDEN OF FLESH
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Meanwhile, at the city outskirts, several hundred survivors had been gathered in safe buildings, guarded by a number of tankmen while most of Willowdale’s mechanized soldiers continued to push deeper into the city. Their core objective was, after all, not to reach and take the cathedral, but to rescue civilians and exterminate any members of the Order who had slipped past notice.
Clad in ominous black armour, the armored men wore the faces of wolves rendered in iron. Shimmering, white Fog poured from their snouts, lending further life to the beastly image. In their hands were giant guns, with twin barrels side-by-side and twin enclosed tubes out to the sides.
Hellhounds, they called themselves, claiming to be the warriors of Willowdale and the Free Cities Alliance, here to rescue them while the mighty cultivators of the Newman Sect slew the monsters who had taken over the city.
A young boy, having passed over the precipice of death, suddenly awakened in his mother’s arms, much to her relief and belation. He looked upon the beastly countenances of the Hellhounds’ helmets, and saw the human faces of the few who had doffed the gas masks, and knew them to be saviors. Within the helmet’s muzzle, a canister was seated.
