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Erak Bloodsworn lvl. 23

Strength: 60

Vigor: 35

Durability: 35

Perception: 22

Processing: 21

“That’s not right!?” Pomp’s voice shrilled in Erak’s ear as he entered the cathedral again. The Priest looked up at the duo and rose from the pew he had been sitting on, striding across the desecrated stone quickly.

“What is not right?” the priest asked.

“We should have gained more levels. Unless…unless the guardian wasn’t killed. I had thought for sure that the Sword would be enough, but maybe it just fled?” Pomp wondered on his shoulder as Erak rested. He would need to try to find his spear after this.

“Why do you have such need for power, dragon? Your foes have been driven before you, nothing left remains, right?”

“The guardian’s blood has riled up the Essence signatures of all if had slain in the area. Those tainted by the Hellfire are consuming those who aren’t and soon we’ll be facing a host who we can’t fight.” Pomp sounded exhausted but he looked healthier than he had been earlier.

“Ahhh, well let’s see if maybe I can do something about that? I don’t have many levels, but I do have some free skills I can use.” Erak turned to look at the priest and looked at his title for the first time.

Iron Priest lvl. 11

This priest has dedicated their life and Essence to a greater being and has thus been rewarded with a sliver of the greater being's power for having survived a tribulation.

“A dispel skill would work well against them,” Pomp said as Erak followed behind the priest. The older man looked out across the grounds and his shoulders slumped as Erak stood next to him.

“Such waste. Let not these fragments of hell linger longer,” the priest threw his hands up, the metal digits gleaming in the light and a vortex appeared. The wisps began to be drawn toward the priest as the man walked down the steps, ignoring the heat from the baked ground even as the hiss of flesh cooking sounded out.

The previously steel gray digits began to cloud, one after another till they were black as the night. Still the priest kept going, more and more of the inky wisps absorbed into the man until hand looked like the bare night sky and the area around the cathedral was clear of them. The priest slumped for a moment before regaining himself, turning and walking sedately back towards Pomp and Erak.

“That wasn’t dispel,” Pomp whispered to Erak.

“You are correct. I serve Galthor, the chainer of evils. I am nowhere near their equal and could not banish them, but I could bind them to myself. And thus, I do my duty,” the man said as he walked up the stone steps, bloody footsteps left on the blackened stone.

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“I am Mathias. Now that this tribulation comes to its end, I would like to see to the internment of my fellows hallowed bones. Along with the Prince and his escort,” Mathias said as he kept walking.

“Prince?” Pomp asked for Erak.

“Yes. Charging in like a hero of old, banners snapping in the wind wearing armor of his forebears with all the courage of a lion. He died screaming in one of those cages,” Mathias said, pointing to a melted crowscage that dangled from a corner of the room.

“Still, he showed himself to have a sliver of the Conqueror’s blood still running in his veins. I will place him to rest with the others of his bloodline in the crypts,” Mathias said as he walked back and into the small room he had come from before.

“That answers that question. Do you think that Sammus will be coming down soon with the relief force?” Pomp asked as Erak began to look around and gather any supplies and recheck his equipment. He shrugged to the dragon’s question and searched the cathedral for anything of value.

The backroom that Mathias had gone into was a horror tableau of torn apart bodies and suffering. The demons had been cruel and vindictive and the scattered body parts of their victims were slowly being collected by Mathias and put in small groupings. Erak left the man with that and trooped outside and into the burnt out ground.

It had been nearly half an hour since the guardian was forced back and Erak looked at Pomp and silently asked him a question.

“The guardian? It reminded me of the Empyrean you fought before we bonded.” Erak nodded, he’d been thinking the same thing.

“Oh look, they have a ship,” Pomp said and Erak looked skyward to see a small shuttle flying down toward them. As it got closer the teardrop shuttle grew larger and larger until the downward thrust of its engines kicked up plumes of ash and threw them about in a black cloud.

Erak kept his mouth firmly closed and turned his head to avoid ash getting into his eyes as the engines cut off and the ramps slowly lowered. Sammus was the first one out, looking about the burnt out remains of the area with horror in his gaze. He stepped tenderly on the ashes while a squad of Imperial soldiers and a few of the survivors from the Red Swan.

“Erak? Are you the only survivor?” Sammus whispered. Erak nodded to the man and looked back at the cathedral. Pomp quickly spun on his shoulder and looked at the prince.

“The guardian destroyed this entire region, but the cathedral protected us. Your brother’s remains are inside of the halls being tended to by only surviving priest,” Pomp said. Sammus’s face fell and he nodded.

“Almonkar wasn’t a bad sibling. Good man and would have been an excellent Emperor.” Sammus bowed his head and the murmur of a few words were heard as he prayed for his dead sibling.

“How many are left on the ship?” Pomp asked.

“Not many. The damage is severe and most of the crew is working hard to keep the ship afloat right now. Our relief efforts shall have to be made with fury and not numbers unfortunately,” Sammus said as the last of the soldiers got off the ship and lined up on the steps of the cathedral.

The drop ship's engines whirred with power and it launched itself back up in the air and toward the Sword. Erak led them back toward the priest so Sammus could pay respects to his dead brother and he heard the awe of all the soldiers as they took in the dead knight and corrupted dragon. They made it to the back and to the priest who had finished his gristly work of assembling body pieces together.

“Which one is my brother?” Sammus asked as he stared at the glistening red piles. Mathias looked up at them and Erak saw tendrils of black reaching up his throat and toward his jaw.

“Your brother was the prince?” Mathias asked.

“Yes. Almonkar.”

“He died well, very brave warrior who did his duty,” Mathias said. He bowed his head toward one pile that had some more richly dressed rags than the rest of them. Sammus looked at it for a moment before turning and walking away, his heaving loud in the cavernous cathedral.