"What is happening? How can the city be ravaged like this?"

Orion arrived three days later to Croates with Amelia and Karteira, only to find it on fire and partially destroyed.

"Let's move in, we'll knew in details doing so."

"Still, we have to be careful."

With both Amelia and Karteira, he followed their advices, and entered the city.

"Burning buildings, houses cut in half, even the tough wall fortification had taken damage..."

This was worse than they were expecting, but it wasn't the end.

The further they went, the stronger the voices of people were heard.

'What are they shouting?'

While carefully listening, he managed to hear just a few words that didn't made much sense.

"Good riddance!"

"After all the wrong you did to us!"

"Pathetic until the very end!"

"For our families!"

Now, they heard those sentence being repeated like a broken records.

Orion's worries began to replace his curiosity.

'Maybe we should turn back.'

But his companions didn't seem inclined to leave, so he swallowed his feelings, and walked toward what seemed to be the plaza of the city.

A bright fire blocked their sight, and a horde of angry citizens appeared in front of it.

"Hey! Who's that?!"

The horde of people turned around and looked at Orion, Amelia, and Karteira nervously and aggressively.

Before they even understood the situation, they were encircled.

'Shit! This is bad.'

Orion looked around him, and thought of escaping with a portal before it turned ugly.

"Could you tell us what has happened in here?"

Karteira walked to the people facing her with torches in her hands.

"Eh? You're not reinforcements?"

Hearing that, Amelia asked.

"To who?"

One of the people in front of her nervously pointed at the big fire in front of the three, at its peak.

"!"

They all had to take a step back from the terrible sight in front of them.

Looking in details, a terrible amount of corpses were being burned, and above all of them, a body had been pierced by a spike, almost charred by the fire.

"Is that... the Lord of this city?"

Orion took a few steps forward and asked the men and women in front of him.

The stench of burnt flesh began to enter his nose, making him wince in disgust.

"Yes! We've killed Horace!"

"We've sacrificed half of our people to manage this feat!"

They looked on their right and left, noticing corpses that weren't being burned.

'I can guess. The ones burning are the soldiers, and the one on the sides are the other citizens.'

"I don't know about reinforcements, but we are travelers. We thought about finding an inn to rest, but were intrigued as to why the city was in such a bad state, so we entered unknowingly. Are we in some kind of danger?"

He asked with caution, waiting for an opportunity to flee. Though, it became unnecessary.

"Travelers? Oh."

"What are we even doing? Even if there had been reinforcement, they wouldn't arrive the same day."

"True. We're sorry for scaring you."

They lowered the torches and slightly bowed respectfully.

Taking the chance, Amelia went for the big question.

"Could you tell us what really happened?"

"Sure, follow us. We can't let you watch this horror, we still know hospitality, even if it is true our city is on the brink of collapsing."

This story has been taken without authorization. Report any sightings.

The three left the plaza with the group of citizens, inside a house that was still standing.

-

For a long time, the citizens of Croates were living peacefully, not bothering the Lords that rapidly changed.

Reasons had it that the Lord of Croates always changed when a newborn grew to age. Where the previous Lord went? They had no idea. They didn't care.

So, they stayed happily in their houses, working to improve their own lives, which were practically ignored by their Lord.

They were pretty happy, as there was no obstruction, and even though they had to pay taxes, it wasn't too hard on them.

It was mostly used to maintain the beautiful castle of Croates, one of their pride.

But Horace Marth was different. He began changing the rules that made the citizens and the Lord maintain the status quo.

He began taking money and food forcefully.

The soldiers were used to cause chaos in town for his own amusement.

Falsely accusing many families of being against him, and executing them.

The list was quite long.

At one point, rage and hate took over the Croates' citizens. They took weapons and torches, and went to the castle.

They knew it was in vain, because of the magic Horace was able to use, but still went, hoping to change the situation.

Instantly, Horace's wrath fell on them. He insulted them of being worthless, that they were his toys, and that toys never went against their master.

Enraged, the citizens began to fight back. It was in all honesty one-sided. Horace sliced the people and the building carelessly, causing great chaos to the city.

They fought the soldiers, and managed to win thanks to their higher numbers, but lost an horrible amount of their friends and families in this conflict.

All that was left was to deal with Horace.

So they took the soldiers' weapons, and fought him head on. He managed to pressure them for a few days, before his magic dwindled.

The moment he was unable to defend himself, they took their chances, and pierced his body from all sides.

Horace died as a monster in their eyes.

The day they won, they praised the dead, and burned the corpses of the soldiers, and Horace. This was their victory, yet, they had lost way too much.

-

Orion placed his elbows on the table and hide his eyes behind his hands.

Amelia closed her eyes, and Karteira looked away.

The three emotions was similar.

'We've took too long.'

Feelings of guilt began to take over them, as they learned about the conflict.

'Since we've taken too long, it got to a point were the citizens themselves acted. It's not their job to fight the Apostles.'

'But even so, this is practically a miracle. They managed to kill an Apostle and the whole army behind him.'

He thought a little more on that.

'The corruption was probably behind that once again.'

The citizens in front of them weren't done explaining, so they continued.

"We've also found something very disturbing inside the castle. It was so much that we're thinking of destroying it."

Orion looked at them.

"We always wondered why the previous Lord always disappeared without a trace. We've found a kind of mausoleum in the basement..."

'I have a very bad feeling about this one.'

They looked at each other, and then at Orion.

"There was many urns and pedestals scattered in the rooms. On the pedestals were engraved the name of the previous Lords, and in the urns... well."

"Those contained the ashes of their wife and other children. Below the pedestals are the corpses of the previous Lords, all having their heart ripped out of their chest."

"In one of the family book, we've learned about their custom. The one appointed to Apostle had to kill his family, or else he would not obtain the title."

"The new Apostle had to cremate every members, while they had to eat their predecessor's heart, and then lay them to rest below a pedestal."

"All the skeletons showed a broken ribcage where the heart was, which confirmed the custom."

The three could only feel disgust.

'This is revolting. Power truly leads to madness.'

'Eating the heart of the previous Apostle...'

Orion remained quiet.

'I know only one Apostle that never turned into a corrupted husk, and it was Leonis. Is it going to turn to one here, or is it going to remain a corpse?'

'I don't have that same feeling I had with Julian. My soul was screaming that he would come back, but here, I don't feel it.'

The curse merged to his soul was the reason for his particular sensibility toward corruption.

He looked at Amelia and Karteira and whispered.

"We've come here for nothing. There's no reason for us to remain in this town."

"Are you sure?"

Karteira looked strangely at him.

"Yes. We can't help them, and we don't have much time either left. We'd better return on the road instead."

Understanding the hidden meaning inside his words, Amelia agreed.

"That's true. Also, Albriar isn't far from this city, so they can always try to move out. There's not a lot of people who survived anyways, and the place is thrashed. It's too taxing to rebuild everything."

With a nod, Karteira finally agreed too.

Orion stood up after getting his companions' approval.

"Thank you for the explanation."

"We apologize for arriving at such a suspicious time."

The citizens shook their hands and heads.

"No! You do not have to apologize. We are the ones that should, we have nowhere to accommodate you even though you are traveling."

They looked quite apologetic, but there was nothing to be done. In fact, Orion was pretty delighted to learn that another Apostle met its demise.

'Alright, time to move.'

Followed by the citizens, he walked out of Croates. He told them to go to Albriar if they were ready to abandon everything, and that it was the best if they wanted to survive.

Quickly, they left the city and its citizens to their own devices, and returned to Horizon unnoticed.

~

"Really, this continent is slowly falling apart. Or is it the human faction?"

"I can't really answer that."

Tia-Norun and Enri-Ann were once again taking a break, away from the all-seeing table.

"How many events happened out of our expectations?"

A piece of paper in her hands, Tia-Norun read it and began to count.

"Believe me, way too many. If we're talking about large conflicts, everything went at the original pace. But the most important change was definitely-"

"Velridar and Orion, leading to the seal encasing Elliott weakening."

"Exactly."

Both made a very tensed expression.

"Jumping from three months and more to three weeks. This was something I wasn't prepared to hear."

"I'll be honest with you Enri, it's going more and more out of control. It's going way too fast all of a sudden."

"Tia..."

Enri-Ann fell in deep thoughts, but quickly returned to reality and dropped an important information on her.

"Once Elliot returns, I won't be able to predict anything."

"..."

A long silence fell in the room. Tia-Norun blinked a few times, before she broke the silence with a laugh.

"He~"

"What?"

Tia-Norun's gaze fell on the paper.

"I sometimes forget, that's all. But this is very strange indeed."

She tapped her finger on the table.

"Kamala was supposed to die, Karteira was supposed to die, the sisters were supposed to disappear with the anomaly, Florian was planned to fall into corruption, Eric was supposed to lose his life, we never knew about the sirens, the elementals were supposed to remain hidden, and Orion was not supposed to be this close to fight Elliot."

"How many anomalies have currently happened? Is your ability malfunctio- Ah... wait. No, as I said, I sometimes forget. My bad."

She continued while looking at her friend.

"It's a good thing, that means we know more about the correct path, isn't it?"

"No idea. We'll have to carefully monitor the next two weeks, because I have a feeling something absurd will happen."

They both returned to look at Orion through the water after that.