Sefahn swung toward Kerith's neck, attempting to kill him immediately. But, as Sefahn's weapon moved through the air, the light from beneath the water pulsed, and kerith's open hand accelerated just fast enough to strike Sefahn before his blade could take Kerith's head. Sefahn leaped away, attempting to mitigate the force of the blow. But, despite taking nearly no physical damage, Sefahn first domain shuddered from the impact, giving more ground to Kerith's. Kerith pushed forward with another strike. An almost face-splitting smile on his face. Sefahn avoided the next blow entirely, stepping past Kerith and slicing along the priest's side. Kerith's blood dripped into the water, a small wound in his side releasing a few drops of red liquid before closing. The white cloth of kerith's cassock having taken away more of the force from Sefahns strike than he'd anticipated.
Sefahn whirled around, swinging his blade horizontally at Kerith's legs. But Kerith stepped forward, away from Sefahn's blade and toward the stairs. Sefahn rushed forward, his sword poised to skewer Kerith through his spine. Kerith seemed to predict the strike as he spun past the end of the blade and struck at Sefahn's exposed back with a backhanded strike. Like his previous attack, this one accompanied a pulse from the glowing ground. And like before, the attack lacked the physical might Sefahn anticipated, only shaking his domain and not his organs.
Sefahn moved with the strike, stepping closer to the stairs, and turned to regard his opponent. Neither of the two men spoke; Sefahn regarded the priest with cold eyes filled with an intent to kill, while Kerith's face still wore a cruel smile, filled with malice. While standing, Sefahn continued to push his second domain across the land, filling his mind with useless information and straining his soul. But, Sefahn wouldn't let that information distract him, nor did he care if he pushed himself too far to save the children. The other priests were doing something, but even that information was extraneous and ignored. As long as they didn't interfere, they would be left alone.
Kerith stepped toward Sefahn, stomping his foot against the golden ground, creating a near blinding wave of light. The light shredded the wooden floor, exposing the dirt beneath as it rushed toward Sefahn. In response to the surge of light, Sefah raised his cutlass, filled with spirit, and cut through the golden wave. Unfortunately, Sefahns weapon failed to fully dissipate the priest's attack, a portion of the attack impacting his left arm. Following what Sefahn now came to expect from the priest's blows, the physical damage wasn't nearly as high as expected, but his soul shuddered from the collision. The water of Sefahn's domain lowered further, barely covering the feet of a grown man. Rushing past the wave of light, Sefahn called on his domain to create a wave of his own to push him toward Kerith rapidly.
The waters receded rapidly, gathering into a wave at Sefahn's back; Sefahn let his feet catch on the wave, surfing on it toward Kerith with the full force of the unnatural tide. The water's motion disturbed Keriths footing, making him stumble backward. Sefahn Lept off the wave and struck down toward Kerith, who barely slid past the attack, taking another shallow cut across his chest in the exchange. Sefahn followed up with a swing toward Kerith's left side. The priest nocked the blade down with the palm of his hand. Off-target Sefahn's blade cut into Keriht's thigh. Kerith chopped toward Sefahn's neck with an open right hand. Leveraging his sword against the other man's thigh, Sefahn pulled himself past Kerith. A golden crescent continued out of the priest's hand as it moved through empty air, obliterating the staircase. Sefahn called on his domain to create a rapid current underneath the priest's foot, pulling him off balance ever so slightly and ripping the cutlass from his leg.
Kerith's blood flowed rapidly from the new wound, the bone beneath exposed temporarily by Sefahns weapon. Pressing the assault, Sefahn spun his sword to swing upward across The priest's back. The priest fell forward, rolling away from Sefahn's attack. When he returned to his feet, he pivoted on his uninjured leg and brought his left hand in a chop towards Sefahn's right arm with anger in his eyes. Stepping back, Sefahn avoided the priest's hand but failed to evade the golden crescent that erupted out of his fingers. The golden crescent cut into Sefahn's doublet and chest, leaving a bloody wound from his Just below his right pectoral to the shoulder of his left arm. Blood sprayed from the wound, coating Kerith in a bloody mist. Once more, Sefahn's domain and soul shuddered. The waters retreating to little more than a few muddy puddles on the ground, the wind turning placid, and the mist losing its salty taste. The golden ground shined brighter, a series of symbols beginning to form in the light it emitted.
The pain clouded Sefahn's mine for an instant, flooding his conscious mind with red. But, that red faded rapidly, and with a conscious effort, Sefahn used his spirit to force the injury closed, if only barely. The flesh on either side stitched across the wound, forming a covering that stopped the blood flow but did not fully heal the wound. Sefahn regarded his opponent with a dampened satisfaction and noted that the wound on his leg still trickled with red fluid, soaking into the dirt, turning it a brownish-red color. The priest demonstrated skill with souls that Sefahn couldn't match, but his underlying combat abilities were below what Sefahn anticipated. He was slow and clearly lacked combat experience, and if Sefahn weren't focused on something else, he would easily dominate the other man in direct combat. But, with his mind filled with the information from his domain, he had little leeway to activate more active skills from his repertoire. That string of thoughts turned into a feeling of relief when Sefahn's second domain finally reached where he needed it to, halfway around the world.
Sefahn connected himself to a particular individual, calling across the distance almost instantly. >I'm calling in your debt; you know you can't refuse. Harbour these children, take care of them till they are all old enough to survive.< All Sefahn got in response was a feeling of affirmation and resignation, but that was more than enough. The children would survive; they'd be ready for the world when they came of age. Now, all he needed to do was get them there and stop Kerith from noticing what he'd been doing this entire time.
Sefahn rushed forward toward the wounded Kerith, striking at the other man as quickly as he could. Up across the chest, down toward the left hand, across the legs, up toward the armpit. None of the attacks landed, the priest barely evading them all, but Sefahn didn't need them to land; he just needed the other man focused on the fight. A swing towards Kertih's neck was met with a palm strike sending Sefahn's cutlass up over the other man's head; another palm strike slammed into Sefahn's sternum containing a surprising amount of force.
The shocking blow cracked Sefahn's ribs and shook his organs before reopening the wound across his chest, but he didn't let up; he couldn't. His soul shuddered; his first domain flickered but remained present, if only barely.
While pushing toward the other man, Sefahn forcibly shrunk the distance between the children and safety. His soul shrieked at the misuse of the domain; this was not the ocean, this was not a simple retreat to a known harbor. This was stretches of inhabited land, mountains, lakes, villages, and cities, countless things that Sefahn would have to force out of the way. The world had laws, and doing this would break them. The ground shook as things shifted around Sefahn's domain, an impossible path forming between the two locations. Mountains were moved temporarily, city's split, and rivers diverted. An entire continent rumbled as Sefahn worked to grant safety to his charges. But, even as Sefahn felt the strain on his soul reach a level he felt would kill him, he stepped forward toward the priest yet again, intent on hiding the reality of what he was doing.
Sefahn forced his blade downwards, accelerated slightly by what remained of his domain's wind. Kerith stepped sideways to avoid the attack, but Sefahn was just fast enough to take a line of flesh from the other man's arm. Then, flicking his hand outwards, Sefahn caught the falling strip of skin in his other hand, and using To the Victor, the Spoils called upon the pieces of the dead beast hung around his wrist to absorb the priest's flesh. A whirl of false water erupted from the ornament, sucking in the priest's flesh, a ghastly maw dancing at the center. The gem glowed with a black light counter to its natural blue hue, a light that shined through from a depth that didn't exist in this world. That same black light spread across Sefahns body from one arm to the other, coating his blade as he slashed at Kerith once more.
A ghastly image of a beast that once lurked the ocean depths followed Sefahn's strike, accelerating it towards the owner of the targeted flesh, Kerith. The black blade flowed through Kerith's guard, cutting a shallow red line across the priest's chest; the ghastly creature followed after, biting into the flesh around the wound, tearing a piece out of Kerith's side. Kerith ignored the new injury, Spinning and slamming his heel into Sefahn's side, cracking Sefahn's right hip. Sefahn felt his soul shudder again, his first domain crumbling almost entirely, the mist vanished, and the water vanished from the dirt. Using the force of his kick, Kerith lept away from Sefahn. Pulling the golden light from the ground, he once more sent a wave of light at Sefahn. Sefahn lept up over the wave of light and kicked off the support rafters toward Kerith. Landing beside the priest, sefahn felt that his right hip give out, leaving him with only one functional leg, but he continued his attack, nonetheless, chopping at Kerith's left arm. Sefahn's blade cut into Kerith's wrist, stopping in the bone; the transparent creature followed soon after, biting into the area around the cutlass, freeing it from the bone and almost separating Kerith's hand from the arm.
Sefahn felt the path fully form as he continued past the other man. Wasting only an instant, he sent his words to Fairgarth and Torren. >RUN, TAKE THEM AND FLEE ACROSS THAT PATH. DO NOT LOOK BACK.< He felt them hesitate for a moment before ushering the children along the path. He felt them crossing the distance, each running from something they hadn't seen. He felt their panic, their fear, and their hope that he would follow them. But when all of them entered, Sefahn closed this end of the pathway. There was no retreat for him as such a thing would only endanger them.
Sefahn spun on his one functional leg, slashing across the back of kerith's thighs, drawing more blood from the other man. The deceased leviathan followed behind, gorging itself on the fresh blood. Kerith fell forward, slamming his good hand into the golden ground and flipping away from Sefahn. The golden light grew brighter at Keriths touch, becoming almost blinding. When it cleared, Kerith stood facing sefahn, both his hands functional and all his wounds closed. Sefahn looked on with a slightly stunned expression seeing the recovery of the other man. Sefahn knew the other man lacked the spirit control to nit his wounds together himself, so seeing his domain close the injuries was a stunning experience.
"I pity you. A man such as you was probably once legendary. But here you are, on the edge of death, for what? A beast you consider to be a child? Why do all of this for one creature? I don't see the point in it." Kerith started monologuing, and Sefahn let him, choosing to try and recover as much as he could. "I've dealt with many fools like you before, but I will admit you were the first to press me so far. But, like all the others, you have failed. My domain has overcome yours entirely, and your second didn't even amount to much. You lose." Kerith kept talking, and in his words, Sefahn heard the one thing he wanted to be true. "Reveal the location of the abomination to me, and I will make your death painless."
>This again.< Sefahn thought.
"Of course, we will allow the children to live as well," Kerith spoke and solidified what Sefahn had been thinking.
"Heheheheh," Sefahn burst into a bout of strained laughter at the priest's ignorance. The idea that he'd entirely missed the purpose of Sefahn's domain causing him to lose his composure.
"What's so funny, old man?" Kerith asked a tiny bit of disdain alongside the grating compulsion. Sefahn could have held his tongue, but a part of him felt that revealing the truth would lead to a series of events that were far more enjoyable than letting the other man die in ignorant bliss.
"You really thought I'd leave the children in danger," Sefahn responded through shallow laughter. "That I'd even risk letting you near them after this" Sefahn gestured around at the destroyed environment. "They're gone. Across the world, beyond the reach of you and your ilk." Sefahn's wounds knitted together slowly, his hip snapping back into place. "I know how you treat children like them." Sefahn snarled out his disdain towards the church. "If you can't raise them to be weapons, you toss them aside, or worse." Sefahn threw his hand out to the side to emphasize his point. "You think I'd let you do that to them? Let you take them in with kind words before pushing them to become mindless drones for your use?" Sefahn felt the children exit the path he'd opened, and with a silent sigh of relief, he let his second domain fade away, the world filling in what he'd moved with an audible rumble. The strain of extending it so far vanished, filling him with a renewed vigor. "Laughable, That you'd be so dumb. Pitiful even that you'd let me do as I please and take even that shred of victory away from you." Sefahn allowed himself a genuine smile for a moment before frowning once more. "Of course, I've still lost. You drove me to send one child away to protect the rest, and now I've had to send the rest away because I couldn't save them. Unfortunately, I can't let Hal go with the rest of them; she isn't as willing to take a risk as I am." Sefahn sighed at his statement and the thoughts it brought to the surface. "So, we both lose. But, I'd say I did better at achieving my goal than you did. All the children are safe from you. All of them leagues out of your bloody grasp." Sefahn raised his arm to the sides of him, showing that all of his physical wounds had vanished. "All you get is me. And I'll be damned if I go out without a fight."
Kerith's face twisted into an enraged scowl with every word. He'd likely found a way to confirm Sefahn's words, checked for himself that the children were gone and that the only people left in the building were those in this room. That twisted scowl warped further and further with each statement, becoming something almost inhuman "I'll kill you." Kerith gave in to his temper, rushing forward toward Sefahn. all semblance of stance falling away.
"You're a fool." Sefahn berated Kerith, letting his own anger flow out of his soul. The raw emotion filled him with all the energy he needed to showcase the might of a proper Tier Five. A swift strike swept across Kerith's chest. "No better than a dog." Sefahn used Severing Slash to remove Kerith's right hand. The appendage fell to the ground, quickly vanishing into the mouth of the leviathan's apparition. The leviathan Soaked up the blood, flesh, and Sefahn's anger. "You follow your orders to a fault and throw a fit when you fail." Sefahn struck at kerith's neck, but the priest slipped under the blade, diving toward Sefahns chest, attempting to tackle him. "You can barely think for yourself unless it has to do with your mission." Sefahn struck out with his leg, kicking Kerith away from him. His leg now strengthened with Overwhelming Intensity; Sefahn felt Kerith's ribs crumble under the blow. The priest fell backward, gasping for air, his lungs failing to fill with the substance. "Like all you dogs from the inquisition, you let the church control your abilities." Sefahn stepped forward and swung at the priest on the ground. Kerith raised his arms in front of his face as protection, losing another piece of his right arm for his trouble.
The leviathan grew more visible with the new meal of flesh as it continued to soak itself in Sefahn's rage. "Your skills" Sefahn sliced off Kerith's other hand, further feeding the leviathan following his blade. "Your spells." Sefahn kicked Kertih's bloodied arms away from his face. "YOU DON"T EVEN MAKE YOUR OWN DOMAIN." Sefahn let anger pile into his strike as he kicked Kerith across the floor into the four remaining priests. "How many fools have had the misfortune of passing this shoddy abomination on" Sefahn gestured around him at the glowing ground, the ghastly leviathan circling around in emphasis. "The only reason you stood a chance against me was cause I was defending others." Sefahn rebuilt his first domain, forcing Kerith's back to less than it had been at the start. "You're a worthless tool for a master who would as soon kill you themself as send you to die at the hands of one like me." Sefahn forcibly whisked the other priests away with his domain. Their meager defense against his might was quickly crushed, leaving another three bodied in the halls of this once happy place. This left him and Kerith alone in a partially twisted world. "Your only outstanding traits are timing and cruelty. And I'll show you that you are lackluster at the second one," Sefahn spoke in a tone filled with cold anger.
Sefahn flicked his blade out, leaving a shallow cut on Kerith's skin. Two, six, twenty times, Sefahn cut shallow lines in Kerith's flesh. His action were less like a man in combat and more like a chef preparing a slab of pork. He didn't care to end the man; Sefahn wanted to break him. He let his past self come to the surface and take over the punishment of one who dared cross him. Sefahn let anger fill him, and cruelty once more became a weapon he was willing to utilize for his goals. And as sefahn swept his blade at the cowering priest time and again, the malformed leviathan grew ever-present, and Kerith grew paler with the continued loss of blood.
As Sefahn's rage turned to disgust, he felt the soul of the leviathan tied around his arm move, calling to him. The gem that housed the soul of the deceased monster pulsed uniquely, almost reaching out to sefahn. The gem, once the core of a monster from some bottomless abyss, called out with an offer. It asked for Sefahns second domain, the one that Sefahn never felt fit him, today being the first time it served a real purpose. It offered itself in a manner beyond being a catalyst for a false projection of itself, and, in his angered state, Sefahn consented to this.
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Protected waters crumbled inwards, the shattered remnants of it passing into the blue gem on Sefahn's wrist before flowing back to Sefahn as something new. "Lost Territory of the Leviathan's," Sefahn called the name of the new domain, pushing it into the world. The area went black. The light faded away to being merely a hint of something brighter far above. Then, a crushing pressure descended onto the two individuals, and the ground became the only semblance of direction, an anchor point in the boundless deep. Sefahn felt a connection to a limitless expanse of false water in every direction. He felt Kerith, floating, flailing, bleeding in the distance. Off in the distance, the darkness shifted as an impossibly large entity swam past the two men. The water moved, a current forming and ripping past with violence that cared not for the thoughts of the living.
Sefahn walked forward, unimpeded by the water around him, his feet leaving shallow marks in the mud beneath him. He stopped beside the flailing Kerith and called a simple light to illuminate them. In the dark of the deep, the light shined brighter than the sun but barely revealed a foot beyond the two men. Kerith hung in the water, reaching at his throat with hands he no longer had. Sefahn could have let him die like that, choking on water that wasn't real, in a place beyond the light of his god, but instead, he pushed the water away from them. A bubble formed, causing Kerith to fall to the mud below, blood trickling from his many wounds, gasping at the air, gulping it down.
"You never stood a chance," Sefahn said, pitty and disgust in his voice. "You could have left this place, crawl back to your cave, and tell them you failed." Sefahn crouched down beside the crumpled priest. "I would have let you go, and every day it would burn me up inside to know I sent a child away because I was afraid of what you might do. You would have won." Sefahn looked up into the water above them. "But, instead, you had to threaten all of them. And by doing so, you brought us both to this point." Sefah looked back down to see tears seeping out of Kerith's eyes. "I can't go back to the man who you met this morning, you killed that man, and for that, you can be proud." Sefahn stood up and backed away from where Kerith lay on the muddy ground. "Take that pride with you to meet your god." All the pitty left Sefahn's voice, and so to did the anger, leaving nothing but a cold sound that called out into the water.
Above the bubble, the darkness shifted again. In response to that shift, Sefahn pushed the light to be brighter, revealing what swam through the deep. A giant eye, taller than Sefahn and Kerith combined, looked down on the broken priest. That eye was one of hundred attached to a scaly body so large it continued past the bounds of the brighter light. Then, with a rushing current, the side of that scaly beast split open, revealing it to be a mouth filled with an impossible number of teeth. A long tendril that matched the flesh of that horrendously large creature swept in from the distance into the bubble of air Sefahn had made. It wrapped around Kerith and pulled him up toward the maw of that abomination made real. Intent on consuming him, leaving nothing for the world to find.
Perhaps Sefahn pushed him too far, or maybe he was always a step away from going mad. Perhaps the training of the church was just under what his mind could take, and he'd always been at that edge. Maybe the shock of failing so tremendously was too much for him, and it shattered his fragile ego. Some might say he'd always been a little crazy and only made it worse by constantly reaffirming the truth of his own words with Holy Word. Others might claim that the sight of an impossibly large leviathan and its gullet of teeth drove him insane. However, Kerith's mind truly shattered at that moment, crumbling into a thousand tiny little pieces. His ego collapsed, and he became a hollow shell of himself, an empty vessel with no mind to control it.
Or, he would have if he'd been someone weaker.
Tier fives are unique because they have domains. Those domains are a living piece of the user's soul, an entity upon themself, a malformed personality with a single purpose. Usually, this means nothing, the entity born from the shrouding of a tier fives soul lives to serve them, to help them when called. If a tier five lives out their natural lifespan, an incredibly extensive thing, the domain will pass on with them when they die, becoming something less than an echo. If a tier five is killed in combat, the victor takes their domain, if a less cooperative version of it. That becomes dangerous over time, as that entity becomes something more than the shroud of one person's soul. That thing gains its own goals and desires, but its masters will still binds it, stopping it from becoming something beyond their control.
The church wants these older, more dangerous domains. So, they push someone until they break, then push them till they're forced into awakening as a Tier Five. They don't have an army of men who went through years of trial and reached the pinnacle through their own efforts. No, what they have is an army of children they torment till they choose the path the church offers. They take the best from these children, and when the time comes, they have that child end an aging, addled member of the inquisition, forcing them to awaken to a tier five class and, in the process, a domain. So, without going through a trial that would shape them, they now have two domains, one suited to them and one that was grown by the church. And mear minutes after forming their own, they force them to choose. Die, or feed the domain that they awakened to the one they just took from the dead inquisitor. This creates a malformed abomination of a domain, focused on a task that isn't what it wants. But, it's shackled by its nature. It cannot go against its user, no matter how much it wishes it could
In the case of Kerith, his mind died while his domain was active. His ego crumbled, but his soul stood firm, and his body still lived. He ceased to be anything more than shards in his mental abyss, wisps at the edge of his own perception. But, his domain remained present, already imposed on the world and Kerith's own body. That twisted, malformed, single-minded thing, born from less than half the shroud around a person's soul, fed the pieces of other's souls over the years with the church, became the only mind present in Kerith's body. Its purpose never swayed; it was always focused on a single thing, so much so that whenever Kerith has made use of it, he'd restrained what it could do. Now, the chains Kerith kept around it fell away. Its toolkit expanded to everything Kerith could do, and its desire to achieve its one goal became so dangerously potent that it forced itself to evolve. Hallowed Ground was the name forced upon it by the church, a perversion of its purpose that it never cared for, but it obeyed its master and took the name as its own.
But, now that master was gone, And it became what it had always wanted to be.
"The Void by a Shattered Soul" It used Kerith's tongue to call out its new name.
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"What do you think happened?" Torren asked, looking out over an empty valley. In the distance, buildings stood, like a city that shredded the horizon.
"I can't tell. It wasn't a mana storm, no signs of one." Fairgarth said, dropping his usual sarcasm in the face of the situation.
"How can it all be gone?" Torren asked about what he was looking at in the valley.
"I don't know," Fairgarth said.
"DO YOU KNOW ANYTHING?" Torren lost his temper for a second before a look of regret swept over his face. "I'm sorry."
"It's fine, I understand." Fairgarth accepted the apology far more readily than he ever would before. "I do know when it happened, or at least an approximation."
"Hmm?" Torren urged.
"The day we fled. From what I gathered, it was within minutes of our departure." Fairgarth let the words settle in the air before asking his own question. "What did your investigation reveal?"
"Hole lot of fucking nothing," Torren said while settling into a crouched position. "At least, nothing to do with what you wanted to know," Torren said, trying to maintain some semblance of his usual demeanor.
"Your bait is pitiful, but I'll be the naive little fish and bite, this time" Fairgarth caught what Torren was doing and played along. "What useless information could you have possibly come across with your manner of investigating?" Fairgarth said, in a dejected display of mocking.
"Heh, thanks for that," Torren replied with a dry laugh. A look of attentiveness draped across Torren's face before he continued speaking. "All I found out had to do with what they sent me here to deal with. Something's living in the area now. Locals don't know what it is, just that it mostly avoids coming out during the day."
"Mostly?" Faigarth asked, his tone becoming more like the one he would use while working.
"Yeah, mostly," Torren replied. "Few instances of someone going into the ruins at the edge of this and meeting the same fate as anyone who comes at night."
"That fate being?" Fairgarth asked, knowing he wouldn't like the answer.
"I can show you, or tell you, which would you prefer. I'd personally prefer just to show you, so I don't have to think about it." Torren offered a choice and his opinion on the matter.
Fairgarth knew he'd regret either option, but he wasn't here for a personal matter as such; his own sensibilities would have to take an unkempt road. "Show me," Fairgarth said.
Torren stood and started walking back the way the two men had come. The two men walked towards a lie of buildings much like the one across the valley, but these were much clearer, showcasing the unfortunate reality of this place. Buildings in various states of collapse ringed the valley. The ones that still stood revealed the reason the others had toppled. Everything looked like something had cut it perfectly along an invisible circle around the valley. The buildings that survived sat with their interiors exposed to the elements, the ones that didn't, fell outwards, away from the valley. It looked almost like the buildings themselves had all feared tumbling into the circle. The perfectly circular valley had nary a mark on it that could explain its existence. No rocks littered the land, no trees or bushes. The edge did not drop like a cliff created by the wrath of a god, nor did the land slope down like a blast high in the sky had ripped away from the land. The only thing in the entire valley was a perfectly even coating of grass, barely rising above the dirt enough to roll in the wind. An unnatural wind blew in toward the center, pushing all the grass just enough to tilt near permanently towards the emptiness. The city around this place sat lifelessly, all who survived what created the valley having left, for safer areas, or merely away from the memory of the event.
Torren guided Fairgarth through the abandoned buildings to the site of the closest casualty. The area wasn't anything of note compared to the buildings bordering the center. Still, anyone who'd seen the city before would recognize it as the merchant's district—a valuable target for anyone who saw the opportunity after the fear-induced evacuation. A valuable target indeed, but appearances indicated no one had taken advantage of the absence of the shop owners. The few stores that used clear glass showed that the contents were untouched. Some of the other, less affluent business doors sat ajar, showing a similar sight inside. Among the mostly untouched buildings, a broken door stood out to Fairgarth.
Approaching the door, Torren merely gestured for Fairgarth to proceed inside.
Fairgarth hesitated at the door, fear or something else pulling at the edge of his clothes. The feeling whispered in his ear that he didn't want to see why this building was damaged. It demanded he turn tail, run from this place, become a hermit at the top of some mountain. Speaking in silent, wordless sentences, that feeling told him that stepping into this building would change him.
Fairgarth wasn't ever the best at what he did; he was just better at the things that mattered to be put in charge. He didn't climb the ranks of an imperial court like Torren did, nor did he found his own society of magical researchers. Instead, he joined an existing one and did his job till he was the best in the group at paperwork, but far from the best in the world. He wasn't the founder of a new style of magic, nor was anything he'd researched worth considering as groundbreaking. His notes were clean and legible, and his number were almost always correct, but he wasn't the brightest, or the strongest, or the most dedicated to what he did. All Fairgarth was, was a man whose misfortune had put him in the path of someone who taught him to use everything around him to the best of his abilities.
But, the door in front of him screamed at him that if he stepped through, he'd have to change. If he walked in and looked over whatever was inside, he'd have to keep climbing till he reached the pinnacle, lest he falter and fall to his death. The doorway had a sort of pressure about it that, in Fairgarth's mind, did its best to prevent the weak-minded from stepping through to the space beyond. This doorway was like a hole in a curtain that Fairgarth didn't even know existed before he found a way past. And, that curtain had hidden something that would change everything beyond his current comprehension of the world. Not to say that such a thing hadn't already come to pass. Tier fives had died, a vast city sat as abandoned ruins, and all anyone seemed to know about it was that the area was dangerous.
Fairgarth didn't know if he had it in him to survive beyond this vale or if he even had enough time left in his life to take the risk. But, he'd be dammed if he didn't find the truth of what happened to his teacher. So, with a steeled resolve, Fairgarth ignored the screaming feeling in his mind and stepped inside to look at what had lead to this being the only broken door in the area.
"What kind of monster does this?" Fairgarth asked Torren from inside, disgust evident in his voice.
"None. Or at least, none that I know." Torren said, refusing to go inside to respond. "I looked over the mess; whatever did that wasn't feeding. That," Torren shuddered at the thought of the room's contents. "That was done by something angry or disgustingly sadistic."
"Fairgarth agreed with Torren's assessment of the situation. The sight in front of him was beyond anything he'd come across in his life.
In our world, beasts are naturally born creatures. This covers everything from the animals raised for slaughter on a farm to the drakes atop the mountains. Monsters are different. They can come into existence one of two ways; the first and most common is mutation. When enough tainted energy gathers in one spot, it can change a beast, especially one close to death. Blood Wolfs, Acrid vipers, and Stone beaks are some well-known examples of monsters born this way. The second way a monster appears only occurs an overwhelming amount of tainted energy gathers in a spot with nothing to mutate. However, that alone is not enough; something must disturb that energy, move it, and give it shape. Undead are the most common example of this. A soul leaving the mortal realm leaves an echo of itself, creating an undead of one type or another.
The thing to note about these things is that all of them need to eat in some manner. Undead feast on the flesh of the living to gather enough energy to keep walking. Blood wolves eat as they did before because they aren't so mutated as not to require sustenance. And beasts eat like all would expect them to. While the amount they intake differs, and the reason for it isn't the same, none of them hunt without the intent of feasting on their prey.
What Fairgarth found in the room didn't aline with this line of thought.
The bodies of three men littered the room, or at least Fairgarth counted three heads in the mess. One man lay against a wall like someone had set him there to rest. One of this man's legs was an unrecognizable mess, crushed beyond recognition as anything other than a meaty pile of flesh and shattered bones. The other leg was intact in theory only, left as only bone, so clean it looked fresh from a mound of grave bugs. Fairgarth didn't get to believe anything had eaten the flesh for more than an instant before he took in the sight of the pile of meaty chunks to the side, one resembling the thigh muscle of a grown man. The left arm of his man was in a similar state, up to the elbow, that is. Above that, the flesh was ripped apart up to the middle of the arm but otherwise still attached to the bone. Finally, Fairgarth noted that this man's head was, thankfully, intact aside from some skin that appeared to have been yanked off with chunks of hair.
The first man's body had been torn apart in a way resembling gruesome curiosity, but the other two lost that subtlety. The second man's head was crushed, beyond recognition, his neck leading into a mutilated sack of flesh with protrusions of bone at odd angles. His chest, a gaping mess of viscera, something having ripped his sternum and the front half of his rib cage through the flesh. His spine, visible through the gaping wound in some areas, had marks like someone had reached in and squeezed it enough to crush the vertebrae. The man's heart, torn away from his chest, lay in between his legs. Those very legs had both been twisted wholly around, facing the front of him once again but completely destroyed by the process.
The third and final man could be said to have the most intact body, not that it meant much. His limbs had all been stretched beyond the ability of his body. Whatever had killed him appeared to have stopped pulling on a section when the skin started to tare instead of stretching with the new length of the appendage. The thing that had killed him had somehow ripped his skull in half from the crown. His abdomen bulged outward, folded backward like a piece of parchment, shattering his spine.
Fairgarth noted a look of cold fear in the eyes of the two men who still had eyes. Not pain, fear, a fear so potent it prevented any other emotion from seeping into their eyes before they died. Another thing Fairgarth noted after looking around for more than a few seconds was that all of the men were almost naked. All of them wore simple undergarments, but otherwise, no cloth nor fibers lay across their corpses. Their state of dress left Fairgarth with even more questions about the unfortunate souls. But, whoever they'd been, the only question Fairgart cared about was what had ripped them apart.
The method used to tare them apart didn't leave a single, clean wound: so more than likely, whatever did this had done so by hand instead of with tools and weapons. That spoke to an abhorrent physical might, rivaled by only a few monsters Fairgarth knew of, all too big to fit in this room. Whatever it was must also have had some way to keep them all under control while it worked on the others. As Fairgarth noted, none of them had any marks under or around their fingernails to suggest they'd scratched at the ground or their killer. In fact, aside from the obvious wounds, none of the men had any signs on them that they'd managed to put up a fight, but plenty of signs said they'd survived at least a portion of their torment. Bruising on the legs of the man's with the crushed skull and the arms of the man with the stretched limbs told a story of agony not shown in the one's eyes. Several pieces of flesh in the pile by the first man had signs of scabbing, indicating he'd survived long enough to have those scabs start to take hold before that flesh had been ripped off of him in turn.
Dozens of tiny things like this told a story of three men tormented beyond the point of insanity before losing their life to some brutally sadistic creature.
After Fairgarth felt he had a grasp of the situation and long past the point of wanting to vomit, he left the building to converse with Torren.
"So, our job wouldn't happen to be finding out what destroyed the city, would it," Fairgarth said, the barest hint of sarcasm slipping into his trembling voice.
"Unfortunately not," Torren replied, his tone slipping into the one he used while working. "The task I have been given is to search and eliminate whatever prevents the armies of the empire from retaking this city. I offer a position on my team to you if you deign to accept it. Know that if you refuse, you may not speak to anyone about what you've seen here. I patiently await your response." Torren, contrary to his words, looked at Fairgarth, imploring him to accept.
"I appreciate your offer and look forward to working with you," Fairgarth said in a mock formal tone.