In the end, Cyril relinquished control of the Pagoda back over to its rightful owner.

A leash of ethereal purple light whipped out from Loras' hand and attached to the building, allowing him to once more tow it along in their wake. Despite Cyril’s earlier demonstration of bravado and brute strength, he could still acknowledge there was a subtle flex of strength behind Loras' control. Though the metallic cultivator specialized in augmenting his constitution, he hadn't neglected his willshaping and qi manipulation.

As they rushed to the beacon, Cyril let his attention delve deeper into the Knowledge network that linked his tribe together. It resonated with one of his mental channels in particular. When he circulated Knowledge qi through it, clusters of tiny runes flared across his vision, as if he was seeing stars.

After a moment of consideration, Cyril circulated the rhythm for his Translate Cantrip. Once the technique took hold, the rune clusters arranged themselves into the familiar alphabet of his native language.

Most of them were names, he realized, presumably grouped together in a rough approximation of their present locations. They shifted and danced among one another in a complex weave, faint blue-green lines linking them all together.

Such a bird’s-eye view of their formation offered a massive advantage in conducting battlefield strategy. He could imagine Elys hovering above it all, shuffling pieces about the board. No doubt the Cult of Leviathan had their own strategists on the other end opposing her. The Dominion of Water and its adjacent concepts dabbled in scrying, obfuscation, flexibility. They would have produced, or otherwise procured, mentalists and tacticians of staggering intellect that had mastered the art of war.

Cyril had played enough games against his elder sister growing up to almost pity those on the other side. Bonding with Phoenix must have made her a true fiend to face these days.

However, the more he investigated the Knowledge network, the less assured he was of their dominating advantage. They had managed to defend the central compound and large swathes of territory remained completely unopposed, but most of the battlefield’s focus seemed to center on several key points. While he didn’t attempt to listen in on any of the mental communications from those clusters, a vague sense of unease leaked into the back of Cyril’s mind as he contemplated those areas. He hoped it was his imagination, and not the confusion and dismay of his tribespeople.

Cyril was so caught up in this mental world that he didn’t notice anything wrong until Loras sent out a warning thought to him and Tyrin. They had almost arrived at the site of the distress call they had intercepted.

Loras had the sharpest eyes out of their group, so he was the first to make out the splashes of blood painting the ground in the distance. Deliberate strokes, forming complex runes with each line as long as a man’s arm. The crimson blood almost blended in with the surrounding sand, only dimly illuminated by the Fire and Sun techniques burning in the night sky overhead. A casual observer may have missed the runes altogether, if not for the profane qi leaking up from them like corpse smoke.

Most of Cyril’s good cheer from their earlier victories had evaporated by the time they approached the blood-runes. The unholy qi hummed in the air, a disorienting effect that rippled through his seismic senses.

A throbbing pain pulsed between Cyril’s temples. Nausea squeezed his stomach, and the cloying scent of death forced him to cover his mouth and suppress a gag.

Loras looked shaken as well, his sculpted lips and hands trembling. The curse operated on a level somewhere between the mental and spiritual. While Loras’ greater core advancement should have offered more protection against any sort of direct assault compared to Cyril’s Foundation Stage, it also meant that the profane secrets of the energy resonated with him on a deeper level. Loras shook his head and pulled out his flute.

Instead of transforming to his resonant ivory state to attempt to counteract the aura of the blood-runes, he remained in his dissonant ebony form. Chaotic notes spilled from his flute, a wild, passionate song that filled the surroundings and attempted to overwhelm the eerie, monotonous hum that reverberated around them.

Cyril’s migraine abated somewhat, enough to once more focus on the world around them. Tyrin swooped down from the skies but didn’t fully land; he hovered in place twenty paces overhead, his expression grim as he surveyed the blood-runes painted in the sand.

He pointed toward a small obelisk in the center of the runes that Cyril had mistaken as a sandstone outcropping at first. Mirage-like shimmers obscured its edges--an illusory Water technique, most likely.

Cyril circulated Knowledge qi into his eyes, and the edges of the obelisk became slightly clearer. It was an inefficient use of his power, but he still had plenty to spare.

His qi reserves weren’t an issue, between Behemoth’s focused attention and the apothecary’s worth of elixirs and pills he had consumed. He was more concerned that mental exhaustion would make his attention slip, leading to some catastrophic error in judgment. Or that, even with near boundless reserves, he was still only in the Foundation Stages, greatly limited in his ability to express Behemoth’s true potential.

These doubts hammered at his mental defenses. In a flash of insight, he realized that these twisted thoughts were part of the effect of the profane qi. It was a talisman of discord, meant to sow chaos and disorder in the battlefield. Once this epiphany occurred to him, the negative emotions felt artificial--contrived. But, as he made out the true form of the obelisk, his doubt turned to horror.

The obelisk was a person. A person so twisted and broken it was hard to imagine he was still alive. It was one of the elders of his tribe, a somewhat-familiar old man who had once had smiling lines etched around his eyes. Now, he had been contorted into something unrecognizable. A carrion totem. And, Cyril realized, this was the source of the distress call. The mental anguish leaking through their connection blended with the profane qi, granting it direct access into their minds.

The Cult of Leviathan had discovered a way to turn their Knowledge network against them.

Still, there seemed to be more to the desecration than that. Something more insidious than mockery and a subversive mental assault on those within its range.

There are more of these being reported across the battlefield, said Tyrin. Elys is trying to figure out their purpose. Listen.

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A few seconds later, their sisters’ voice echoed into the heads of every member of the tribe attuned to the network.

We have discovered a concerted effort to create some sort of cursed formation across the battlefield. First priority is destroying the individual nodes. We are attempting to divine the intention. For now, do not attempt to render aid. Our best healers and formation-breakers, including myself, cannot reverse this. Destroy the nodes. The battle is not yet won, and Leviathan’s forces are ruthless. Do what we must. .

A hollow quiet followed her brief speech. Sadness had laced her projected thoughts, the unvoiced understanding of just what the carrion totems were--their own people fleshcrafted into weapons to be used against them.

Solemnly, Cyril extended his Fragment-augmented hand toward the obelisk and channeled Pressure. Loras weaved his own Gravity qi behind the technique, reinforcing it with twinned energy. Tyrin unsheathed his sword and slashed in the direction of the carrion totem, unleashing a crescent of solar devastation. The techniques converged onto the target and annihilated it in an inferno of rotating force.

The distress call vanished all at once. In its wake, the silence seemed even more oppressive. Cyril could hear his own ragged breathing, feel his pulse pounding away at his temples.

Even if they completely routed the enemy forces, it would not be enough. Mercy sounded like a cruel joke. He understood now the hatred Loras had felt towards Leviathan’s cultists. They were monsters. Beasts. More contemptible than wyrms. He almost wanted to squeeze his fist, to attempt to crush Loras’ Pagoda and the prisoners they had contained within.

Taking a long, deep breath, Cyril re-centered himself. Told himself that his violent urges were the last aftershock of the carrion totem’s cursed aura. Still, the temptation lingered.

The seething anger bubbling in his stomach only continued to grow as Cyril and his companions patrolled throughout the area, responding to newly-emerging distress beacons. They found two more carrion totems within a five-mile radius, apparently freshly-created, though no sign of the culprit revealed itself. Cyril clenched his fists so hard he thought his bones may shatter. His body subconsciously circulated Volcanic qi to reinforce his hands; molten incandescence dripped from his palms, pattering against the sand and vitrifying into scars of smoky glass.

A quick glance at his soul revealed that his resistance to Curse Qi had improved to 3% from his brief exposure to the carrion totems. No doubt it would have improved more if he bothered to come closer to the fountains of profane qi, but the very idea sickened him. Just profiting in some way from the suffering of his people left a bitter taste in his mouth. That was the path of cultivation that Leviathan and his minions followed, and he wanted as little to do with it as possible.

As they approached a fourth carrion totem that had sprouted out of nowhere less than a mile away, another group of orange-robed tribesmen joined them from the east.

Their leader was an Early Nascent Soul cultivator with a long, forked beard, vibrant as a sparklizard’s tail. Cyril recognized him--one of Uncle’s most-treasured drinking companions, Elder Lorian. Despite his merry appearance, there was a solemn gravity to his glare, an outraged tremble to his lips.

Under his command were five warriors in the Late Foundation Stage. All of them bowed in unison along with Elder Lorian after recognizing Tyrin. When Lorian bowed to Cyril as well, they shared confused gazes but followed his lead. All of them were young enough to have been children while Cyril was still around, and even if they had seen him before, his advancement along the path of cultivation had altered his physique enough that they didn’t recognize him behind his mask.

“Princes,” the elder intoned gravely. “Have you discovered what bastard is responsible for this?”

Cyril gritted his teeth and remained quiet.

Tyrin shook his head and descended fully from the sky, landing in front of Lorian. He transmitted a series of mental images toward the new group of cultivators, detailing what little they had discovered and their mostly-unfounded suspicions. Tyrin seemed to believe this was the work of an Ascended, likely refusing to believe that humans were capable of doing this to one another, but Cyril was not so sure.

“We also have destroyed a few of these…carrion totems,” said Lorian. “They are appearing all over the battlefield. Like you, we have discovered very little of substance that we can trace. Which makes me think there is only one place they could be hiding.”

After a couple moments of thought, Cyril caught on to what the elder was implying. He looked down at the sand below his feet and sighed. Underground. Of course.

Loras nodded slowly and kneeled, planting his hands against the ground. Cyril mimicked him, sending his spiritual senses downward. As suspected, there did appear to be tunnels deep below, leading down into an open space that must have been a subterranean cavern. The labyrinthine Underdark continued deep below them, linked to the surface through a series of constructed caverns and wyrm tunnels.

Cyril clenched his jaw and prepared himself to journey below the earth once more.

Then, the ground trembled beneath them. Loras frowned and opened his mouth, then appeared to reconsider. Cyril closed his eyes and attempted to discover what the other cultivator had discovered. Loras was far more attuned to seismic activity and vibrations than he was due to his Dominion of Music and sub-affinities. It took eight seconds for Cyril to hone in on the rapid ascent of a dozen figures.

A twinge of paranoia made him suspect wyrms at first. Then, as they neared the surface, he recognized they were shaped like humanoids. He prepared to circulate qi to transform himself to a golem, but Loras reached out and seized him by the wrist.

Cyril, he said through their private mental link. Have you made any..strange friends, lately?

Cyril bit back a glib reply and shrugged. Before he could figure out exactly what Loras could be referring to, a seam appeared in the ground beside them. Darkness qi broiled outward, deeper black than the surrounding night, forming a miasma of dense qi. Within it, he could make out figures, mostly bearing shocks of white hair, their gray faces inhumanly beautiful. On their knees, surrounded by this squadron of drows, three figures in cerulean plate armor were bound and gagged. Members of the Cult of Leviathan, their suppressed cores brimming with Nascent Soul qi.

Cyril looked on, speechless, as he recognized the feminine figure at the head of the group. Her pale face was sharp and beautiful as a blade, and silken hair flowed about her in the light breeze. At her side, a towering figure with a mane of Dark hair met Cyril’s stare and winked. It was the man who had stabbed Lady Firouza in the throat before vanishing, along with his young charge.

“We have discovered these rats scurrying about in our passages,” said the woman, a wicked smile spreading across her face. “It is my pleasure to deliver this gift to you, as my official response to the token you bequeathed me during our first acquaintance.”

Tyrin’s head slowly turned to look at Cyril, his expression inscrutable.

Cyril bit his lip, remembering how he had tossed this very drow Hunger-Made-Alive’s soulgem in order to force her into a Fourth Sphere vision. Was she harboring a grudge over that? No, her words seemed sincere.

“Along with these rats,” she continued, “I have personally brought a hundred of my people’s best warriors to assist you in this battle. As we speak, they are emerging from the Underdark to help secure your territory.” She savagely kicked one of the men in plate armor, toppling him over. When he squirmed in a pathetic attempt to lash back at her, her towering Spirit Guardian and a couple other drows began to lay into him with merciless stomps.

Undaunted, the woman continued. “These three enemies, who have gone around desecrating your people and turning them into cursed totems, are yours to deal with as you wish. Come now, Soren, do not break the pathetic human.”

The Dark-haired man shrugged and stepped away, leaving the armored cultist leaking blood into the sand.

Cyril coughed, a dreadful suspicion growing in the back of his mind and replacing his earlier rage. As pleased as he was to have the source of their dismay delivered to them, he knew there was more to this than he had managed to understand so far.

“Thank you,” he said, attempting to keep his tone neutral.

The drow woman smirked and spun a small throwing knife along her outstretched palm. It shuddered to a stop, its glistening tip pointed directly at Cyril. “You are most welcome, my betrothed.”