[Chapter 2.3] - Blood Altar

Hahaha. The people are so damned fearful. It is quite enjoyable to watch, but at the same time more than a tad annoying. No one dares speak a damned thing to me.

Even though I was freely able to enter the village, even the village elder dares to not speak a word to me. Instead, everyone stays as far back as they can. Many of the mortals are even hiding in their pitiful houses of grass and mud. Bah.

Too be honest, the village of Zephyr Horn isn’t all that much to look at. With barely more than five hundred residents, the vast majority of them are old, weak, and infirm. Walking through the place, I barely see more than a dozen children.

Bless those children though. Even though their elders all fear me, they have no such expectations. Even though the adults try to shoo them away, they all come running willy nilly to me to play.

Many ask questions, many run around in fascination. They ask how old I am and what I was doing and why that big tree sudden showed up. The oldest of them, a young girl who is rail thin and as pale as a ghost asks if I’m really a god.

The young girl is perhaps twelve or thirteen, but just by looking at her I can tell that she is not long for the world. Her body is weak and her lips are pale. Even I’m not unmoved by such a thing.

Even though I stand there, with the looks of a child younger than her, and am still fucking naked, I can feel that the desire that brought her before me. Even her parents, and the others, didn’t even do so. Even though she felt fear, she was still willing to come.

Aaaaah. *Sighs* The hope in a child’s eyes is simply too much.

“Heh. I am truly a god, girl. I do not know you, and you do not know me, but I will speak the truth.” I smile at the girl and nod, even as I reach out to her with my magic.

What I feel though suddenly changes my face, causing it twist up in a snarl.

The girl was all but a walking corpse. Her life was all but gone. The taint in her blood is dense and is eating her from the inside out.

But I recognize that power, that taint. It makes me even feel disgusted.

My looks seem to frighten even the kids, who hurried moved away from me even as the adults do the same. I really couldn’t blame them. Even the girl who asked her question of me trembles and tries to step back.

I don’t let her though, and suddenly whip out my hand and make a grasping motion. My magic bellows out like a wave, condensing into visibility in an instant as it wraps around the girl who suddenly screams in horror. It is a truly frightening thing.

However, I have no intentions of harming her. They just don’t know it yet, and I’m not in the fucking mood to explain. Therefore I use my magic and causes it to form a halo around her head, which suddenly causes her to go limp, having fallen unconscious.

My magic holds her up though, and no doubt everyone who is watching would think that she was dead at that moment.

For me though, I’m concentrating on something else. I use my power and my magic and reach into her body, and start forming what are basically magic filters in her veins. I start with her heart and cleanse it.

This sort of thing is a hard process at my current level of power, but I don’t really give a damn. As her heart is cleared of the taint, it beats more and more strongly, bringing toward it more and more of the taint within her blood.

That taint though isn’t destroyed. Instead I use my magic and start expelling it out of her body. To everyone watching, it would be as if something unimaginable was squeezing the poor girl’s body. Black muck oozes out of her mouth and nose and ears and even her eyes.

It even drips out of some other uncomfortable places, but I won’t mention it at the moment.

As the taint is expelled, her previously pale skin starts showing signs of color. Her breathing becomes quicker and more normal, and even her pale lips gain a shade of healthy red. Her hair, which before had been simple brown and hung limply starts to straighten and gain a beautiful luster to it.

Her simple ragged dress is stained with the black taint, but in the areas where none is, everyone can see that something is happening.

I though don’t notice this, with my focus completely on what I am doing inside of her body. As more and more of the taint within her blood is removed, it starts to resist, squirming within her veins as if a living thing. No matter how much it resists though, I force it all out, squashing it with my furious power.

Oh, damned right. I am very much fucking mad at the moment.

All in all, it takes me ten tense, frenzied minutes to finally do away with it all. The taint has even pooled around the young girl’s feet, so I gently lift her up and move her away while also washing the black muck from her dress with my magic. Once outside the body it is much more easy to deal with.

However, I’m not done with the girl, so I draw her to me. All around, people are scared and astonished and nervous all at the same time. A hundred faces expose a hundred different emotions.

I don’t give a flying crap about them at the moment, and instead reach out to the girl with my hand. I lay it against her chest and frown once more in concentration. Around us my magic shimmers and suddenly starts to revolve in a swirling away of dancing lights. It quickly becomes denser and brighter at my urging.

At the end, it appears like a field of stars rotating around the two of us. To those outside, it is probably very miraculous.

To the girl though, it is the gift of life. Especially when it suddenly comes to a standstill only to suddenly blaze and sink into her body. Every speck of it disappears into her, refilling what was once taken from her.

Even though I had previously removed the taint from her, that didn’t restore the damage that had been done. It had only stopped it from consuming what she had left. Her life itself.

You see, mortals carry their life energy within their blood. It slowly is used up during their lives and they die naturally when it is all gone. A slow growing and then wilting. Unless their life is taken by other means, this is the way the world works.

That taint though… That shit devoirs the life energy directly. It invades, draining the life like a monstrous parasite. And it can only come from one thing. A thing that makes even me tremble with anger and fury.

I hold my feelings in check though, and instead use my magic to give the girl back her life. Only once her body is completely full does my star field of magic come to a stop and then dissipates. Ugh. Turning magic back into life energy is hard fucking work.

Once it is done though, I release my hold on the girl as she starts to tumble forward. I gently grasp her body and lift her up into my arms as if I were carrying a princess. She is breathing normally, and now just simply asleep.

I cast my gaze from her healthily ruddy face and look at the crowd. They are all still staring at me, but none of them dare to make a sound.

Reading on Amazon or a pirate site? This novel is from Royal Road. Support the author by reading it there.

“You, come here.” I call to one of the men nearby, and with a look as if he is about to be strangled to death he steps toward me with hesitant steps. I snort with impatience.

“Get your ass over here and take this girl to her home and lay her in bed to rest. When she wakes, she will be just fine.” I say again, before forcing the girl into his arms. Until that point no one thought that the girl was even still alive.

No doubt they thought that I had killed her. Which is utter bullshit. Even I am not into killing children without reason.

Still, even as that is going on, one of the other kids, a boy of no more than four or five streaks out of the crowd and heads toward the taint that has been left on the ground. Thankfully I catch him out of corner of my eye and quickly turn.

“Stop!” I bellow, even as I reach out with my magic and form a dome of power around where the taint is on the ground. It stops the boy dead in his tracks, but at the same time the taint muck starts to writhe and squirm and bubble. It slowly starts to pull itself off the ground and into a shape.

A shape even I cannot forget.

It is like a serpent, but isn’t. It is like a dragon, but ain’t. It curls around and around itself, as if chasing its own tail. At the top a bulbous head with a long snout and a pair of blazing red eyes forms.

Then its jaws open up wide and a deep, low hiss comes from it, echoing as if from the abyss itself.

“Youuuuussss! You were ssssssealed! How come youssss be here?” The serpentine voice hisses out at me. I simply stand still and tall and glare at it.

“World Serpent. Do you honestly believe that even my family could seal me for so long? Even as you devoured the world, as their strength failed so did the seal placed upon my slumber.” At that moment I speak back to it with both my magic and my remaining god power. My voice causes the air to crack and the ground to shake.

Okay, so I lost myself a bit there. I lower my tone when I realize that I’d nearly knocked everyone to the ground. Still, anyone could see that my eyes are blazing with my anger.

“It mattersssss not. Thissss world will end ssssssoon. I have tainted everythingggggg that remainsssss. Not even your magic can ssssstop it now.” The serpent hisses again, before its body of taint suddenly explodes. It is powerful enough to shatter my dome of magic, sending black splotches all over the place. But at the same time, those bits and pieces turn and rush away from both me and the crowd, heading toward the center of the village.

Everyone is dumbfounded, but I’m not. I give chase, pushing my body along with both my power and my magic, which causes me to disappear in a streak of light. As for where we are going, I can already see it.

It is a stage made out of stone. Upon that stage is an altar. A black monstrosity. Even I am almost pushed back from it as its vile atmosphere strikes at me like a running into a wall.

I still push through it, and in that instant I’m left standing in front of the altar. It is black as night and as tall as my chest. Upon it is a single indentation, like a bowl had been carved into it. Within that bowl is blood which is still as red as the day it was spilled.

The taint is trying desperately to disappear into it, but I reach out and block it with my magic. This time I capture it out of the air with a thought, and with a white flash of light it is all destroyed. Not a single speck of that taint remains.

The altar though is a different thing altogether. The taint without a body is very weak. But this altar is a creation of a monster. In it is the culmination of thousands of years worth of life energy. The very blood of the people who have worshipped at it.

I can also feel the power of the gods within it. Hmmm… So it is like that.

I laugh. Oh, how do I laugh at that point of time. Of course, of course it would be that way. Why wouldn’t my family, the gods themselves be so stupid? They could do nothing else.

They made a deal with the World Serpent in order to survive. Those damned fucking fools.

Of course they would dare to conspire to treat with the World Serpent in return for their fucking lives.

Fuck! FUCK! FUCK! FUCK! FUCK!!!

My laughter at that moment turns into a yell as I strike out. My magic flashes and blazes as I smash at the altar with my fists. At first it resists, but slowly it cracks as I slam into it more and more.

With each of my slamming fists I yell, and every time I hit it my strength grows. With each crack of the altar my magic forcibly absorbs the god power held within it, stripping its protection while increasing my own strength. The god power of perhaps a single god is contained with the altar, and my body greedily devours it.

The destruction comes to an end only after every single bit of that god power is consumed, and the altar is left cracked and broken. I don’t dare to leave it there though, so I gather it all up and crush it in a sphere of magic that tightens and tightens. At the end, only a marble of black rock remains, fused and condensed.

I’m not done with it though, and grin evilly as I reach towards the sky with my hands, palms up and flat.

“World Serpent! You cannot devour this world! I still stand, and with each of these blood altars I destroy, I shall strengthen and you shall weaken! I will send you to the void!” I yell out, my voice a booming, frenzied thing that shakes the earth itself and tears at the sky. Above me, a crack appears, and I clench my fists and tear it wide open with my magic.

A sudden quake sounds, like the sound of ripping thread as I use my magic to force open a tear through the realms. Beyond that, a sudden suction happens, but I trap it before anything could be pulled from the ground.

All of it but the marbled remains of the blood altar. Even I cannot help but grin as it is suddenly yanked up and disappears into the black abyss within that crack in the realms. Beyond that is a place even I have not gone before.

Nor do I want to.

The marble cracks upon entering, and I get to watch it is suddenly destroyed. Only then do I let the tear close, slapping my clenched fists together in front of me. The sky returns to normal and everything goes still.

BOOM!

A violent shake thunders through the earth, and the air itself screams with the sudden cry of pain and misery.

Hahahahahaha!

The altars are made from the very body of the World Serpent, and I just destroyed one of its fragments. Of course it would be pained. Hehehehe.

And that expression of pain brings a devastatingly grand smile to my face.