Chapter 23.1 - Rivia Ahst
It was just as Jerekka said. When Trey reached the boulder and tried to touch it, the illusion simply let him slide right on through and revealed a large boarded latch built into the ground.
“Get the fuck down there. Keep them distracted until I strike, and then help me kill whoever’s down there when I act.”
Jerekka gave Trey one last frown, pulled up the latch by a metal handle built into it and turned around to descend downwards on an old but sturdy ladder. The wood creaked beneath the weight of the soldier and Trey could see a faint light further down the hall.
“Halt!” A surprised voice of another man beneath Trey called out and the sounds of unsheathing weapons came to his ears.
Trey watched from above as Jerekka turned around after dismounting the ladder and raised his arms up in surrender.
“It is I, Jerekka! Do you not recognize me Tuthu? Varz?”
The sound of armored bodies moving stopped short, and soon Trey began to hear laughter as the sound of weapons sheathing themselves.
“Jerekka!” another unfamiliar voice called out as Trey watched two culn soldiers approach his minion. He could see them now, directly under him and exchanging greetings with Jerekka as old friends.
“You bastard, you scared me!” one of them said happily, waving a flask of what Trey assumed to be alcohol based on the way the soldier rocked back and forth with unsteady balance.
“Right!” said the other one motioning to the ladder. “Why by the Infernal Crowns are you using THIS entrance? Are you being lazy again? Not wanting to deal with the protocols at the gate?”
Jerekka let out a fake smile and clapped a hand on his drunken friend’s shoulder. He was sweating, and he was feeling guilty for what he was being forced to do. He wanted to scream at them to run, to get out of here, but he... couldn’t. The contract wouldn’t let him.
Why did it have to be them?
The demon’s eyes began to tear up as he saw Trey shadowstep, appearing directly behind his two childhood friends. They deserved better than this.
“Is everything ok?” asked Jerekka’s friend just before his eyes went wide and a spray of blood erupted from his throat.
“I’m sorry…” muttered Jerekka, pulling out a knife tucked into his belt and sinking it into his friend’s skull. He did this while watching Trey break the neck of his other friend in a simple, practiced motion. A single tear came down his face but Jerekka brushed it away before Trey could see.
He wouldn’t give Trey the satisfaction of seeing.
“You have gained XP. Your ability Aspect of the Devil: Claws has gained 1 level. Your ability Shadowstep has gained 1 level. You have gained 1 overall level.”
A couple seconds later, and the culn guards Jerekka had known so well were disposed of - their bodies placed to the side of the tunnel where Trey was actively looting them.
“They don’t have shit.” Trey spat in irritation. He turned to look down the tunnel, ignoring the ravenous hunger Sithis was pouring into him and pointed. “What’s down there?”
Jerekka continued staring at his fallen comrades for a time and didn’t look up as he replied, eventually resting his head against the cold earth of the hidden passage. “It leads… into the great hall. They should be celebrating there before the marriage ceremony in Captain Coraza’s chambers.”
Trey raised an eyebrow. “Time to get moving then.”
The hallway was long. Really long, well over 2 miles of cramped underground tunnel long, and Napoleon scurried off ahead to get a better idea of what was there. Half an hour at a jog, and Trey finally came within seeing-distance of the end.
Far ahead of him, Trey watched Napoleon peaking through a crack in a stone wall blocking off the passage. Trey could hear the occasional laughter and screaming as well as the shuffling of bodies - all of it echoing slightly through the tight corridor they traversed. Trey hunkered down and stopped jogging to slowly creep ahead, letting his stamina points regenerate after falling below half. Keeping his breathing as light as possible even during the panting from the slightly strenuous jog, he crept over to where Napoleon was standing and placed his greatsword against the wall.
There were likely around 200 of the culn here, about half of them were women. The women had the same skin complexion as the men, ranging from deep royal purple to a lighter faded purple, but were generally 1 to 2 feet shorter than the men. Their horns were about the same length and many of them were even what Trey would consider beautiful.
On the edges of the room were tables stacked with food. Vegetables and fruits Trey didn’t recognize and couldn’t identify were piled up haphazardly next to bodies the culn were carving meat out of.
There were a couple giant lizards that’d been flayed open. Four imps had fallen victim to the culn as well, their bodies mutilated with pieces missing off the corpses. Then there were some of the dwarves and humans Trey had freed, almost a dozen of them. His best guess was they’d been dead a couple hours with most of their intestines and larger muscles on the extremities removed. Most of the culn didn’t use any utensils or plates as they ate but simply grabbed the large knives and carved out pieces of the bodies before devouring the uncooked meat with sloppy relish.
In the middle of the room was a large fire with some kind of shaman sprinkling green dust into it and chanting loudly to the other culn watching nearby. Over the fire were three corpses strung up by long, dangling chains. That’s when he saw it: his own body - or at least what used to be his body, broken and hanging from the central set of metal chains. His intestines had been ripped out to hang loosely over the flames and his old body’s feet were burned, a look of hate still plastered over his face in a deadset sneer. One of the other bodies was the brunette girl Joseline… the escapee who he’d spent ‘quality time’ with on the day they’d all been attacked by the culn war party. Her remnants were in worse shape than his was. She looked like a human pincoushion with arrows littering her body, and the other bruises or gashes along her slim figure suggested torture before death.
He was surprised that he didn’t get angry looking at the scene, despite the mutilation. Instead, he just felt… cold. Cold like the times he’d killed back on Earth... An icey calculating hate set in as he plotted what he was going to do once he found the man who’d killed him, the one responsible for all of their deaths. He didn’t see him anywhere in the room, with the only other point of focus being a circle where some culn warriors were taking turns raping one of the human prisoners. She was tied down to the wood, sobbing, and even some of the culn women were cheering on her abusers as the men drunkenly went to town, pulling her hair violently, beating her, or slamming her face into the wood over and over again while they did. She was almost dead as it was, and Trey was certain she wouldn’t last another couple minutes.
Unlawfully taken from Royal Road, this story should be reported if seen on Amazon.
However, Trey knew going in there to try and do anything about it would result in a quick death. There was zero chance of winning against this many of them, and even though he would just respawn he’d still go through the pain and not have accomplished anything at all. He would have given up the fact that he knew about their secret entrance, and they’d be on high alert after seeing him alive after dying the first time.
Or worse, they’d capture him and torture him.
So Trey just watched in silence until one of the assaulting warriors 2 turns later got too aggressive and accidentally cracked the captive's skull open with an overly aggressive bash of her face into the hard wooden bench. He just laughed along with the rest of them and continued to defile her corpse until he finished to the cheers of the small crowd surrounding him.
Trey remained calm though. He would have his revenge, and it would not only be for himself.
***
The partying and feasting finally died down a couple hours later, and the latch for the tunnel’s stone-wall entrance slowly slid open. According to Jerekka, only the ones assigned to guard this entrance in shifts knew of its existence - outside of the chieftain, spiritual leaders and officers.
So it made Trey’s advance easy.
Trey opened the hidden latch as slowly as he could, the stone wall built over the latch sliding with it to his right. In front of him were two dozen culn, men and women, and they were all passed out due to alcohol intoxication. The others had left the large hall for the refuge of their own rooms, with the exception of one lone drunkard sitting at a bloodied table who had his back turned to Trey.
Trey crept forward, stepping over one of the sleeping men and passing around the flickering remnants of the dying fire, Trey held out his greatsword with a stone cold expression of intent, memories of his past life bringing out the emotionless killer within him back to the surface. He’d had enough of the fucking pity-party he’d subjected himself to since leaving home, that person had no place here.
It may take time and effort, and maybe he’d have some setbacks with the loss of his family… with the loss of Amanda. He was only human after all and letting go of things he’d likely never see again was certainly going to take time. In fact, he was sure he’d forever cherish the memory of them, would love them, and think of them for the rest of his life. However, that person who used those treasured memories to sabotage his own progress forward needed to die along with the life he’d left behind.
He recalled a quote he’d once heard from an ancient Chinese philosopher, and knew the words to be true: ‘If you are depressed, you are living in the past. If you are anxious, you are living in the future. If you are at peace, you are living in the present.’
May he take those words to heart.
He paused as he heard noise coming down from a connecting passage and shifted to plant himself underneath a large table with one of the salamander remnants. His left hand tucked the greatsword underneath him while his right hand landed in a pool of thick bile. He looked down in disgust, his hand dripping with the viscous liquid, but he was glad he had done it when a passing group of four other culn walked past the great hall and into the next set of passages to his right.
Napoleon and Jerekka were still in the tunnel, having been instructed only to come out when the culn drunkard had been ‘removed.’
Trey didn’t take much time and made little noise getting back to his feet, wiping off the bile on his pants. He stepped over another drunk culn woman that began to stir as soon as he planted his first step. Pausing and watching the middle-aged demon woman open her eyes, he silently cursed as they went wide when she saw him.
She screamed, but it was only for a half-second before Trey’s claws came down and ripped through her throat. The woman panicked in the last seconds of her life, flailing about and trying to get away; but she was hurled against the near wall with a brutal thud as she fell unconscious to the floor to bleed out.
The sounds had caused the drunkard to turn around in the meantime, and Trey whirled to see the culn leap to his feet in confusion when a chaos chain shot from above and wrapped itself around the culn’s neck. The long searing chain of solidified magic dragged the gagging demon skywards towards the ceiling, dangling him along with Trey’s old body and the other two humans that’d been strung up.
A second later and the demon’s neck abruptly snapped with an audible crunch.
“Your hidden attack was a critical strike, +56% damage.”
“Your Assassination skill has increased by 1 level. You have gained XP.”
‘I took the liberty of casting it myself since you were busy.’ Sithis commented, amused at the look of shock Trey had.
Trey calmed down and his heart stopped racing, realizing he had barely avoided having the alarm sounded to wake up the numerous culn around him or have reinforcements running in from the rest of the fort. Hopefully everyone was either sleeping or going to bed so that he wouldn’t run into any other… problems.
Trey made his way back over to where Jerekka and Napoleon were watching him at the hidden entrance, grabbing one of the large knives embedded in the feeding tables. He slowed his breathing and took a look back at the culn that’d been strangled in the air overhead, legs and arms hanging limply at the demon’s sides.
Then Trey looked to the sleeping culn on the floor. Cold contempt began to build inside him again as he thought of what these people had done to him, done to the escaped prisoners at the lake, and what they had done to the people here at their ‘feast.’
These were not people, they were monsters. They were beasts. The grip around his greatsword tightened and he turned around to his minions again.
“We will take them out one by one. Cut their throats as deep as you can in a single strike. Napoleon, you make the cuts. I want you getting the XP.” Trey handed the large carving knife over to his imp who took the weapon nervously. “Jerekka, you hold them down and cover their mouths until they bleed out.”
Jerekka looked at him in horror, obviously repulsed and then to the sleeping culn around the room. “That’s treachery! There is no honor in killing defenseless sleeping-”
“Do not speak to me of honor!” Trey spat with venom in his words. “You fuckers started this, I’m only paying you back half of what you all deserve. Now shut the fuck up and do as I say. As you two work the left side, I’ll work the right. Keep moving one by one and making sure they don’t make any noise, when we’ve killed all of them you’ll be leading me to the captain’s quarters.”
Turning around and slamming a foot hard into the neck of a sleeping culn soldier, the crack was audible and the eyes only opened to see a greatsword shimmer above the eyes before piercing the man’s skull. Trey then turned back to his minions in a quiet rage.
“NOW!” he whispered forcefully.
Killing all the culn took a lot less time than Trey had anticipated. Of all of them, only one of the women managed to make any noise as she died after she kicked off a pitcher of water in her struggle. The rest of the kills went as planned. At the end of it, with 25 kills under their belts including the guy Sithis had strangled, both Trey and Napoleon had each gained another level.
“Your minion Napoleon has gained 1 overall level. Your minion Napoleon has gained the Assassination skill. Your minion Napoleon has gained the Small Blades skill. Your Assassination skill has increased by 1 level. You have gained 1 overall level.”
Trey dismissed the notifications as they came, quickly dumping another body onto the floor. He grimaced at the waste, the young woman was beautiful. But she was in his way, and if he had left them there when trying to escape they may have hindered his progress out.
He had also decided ahead of time that he was going to show them no mercy.
Not to these... things.
Jerekka was puking to the side and Trey just sneered at him as he began administering his skill and stat points, along with Napoleon’s. How Jerekka could feel remorse for killing his kin and none for killing the humans or dwarves just flat out disgusted Trey.
Play stupid games, win stupid prizes.