Blood and bodies filled the streets of the City of Theralo, a once bustling city of millions that did a brisk trade in all things magical and mundane. At least, it had until the Cult’s plans came to fruition.
Primus Araneus smiled as he sipped from a goblet of blood red wine on a balcony high in the Royal Palace that overlooked the city. Screams of terror and the sound of fighting echoed up from the city, a music so sweet to his ears that he’d disabled the Palace’s privacy wards to better hear them.
The ward spirit had been ancient and powerful, tied to the blood of the royal family. Legends said that it was a gift of protection from the Zodiacs themselves. The powers the ward spirit had demonstrated supported the legend, as the first of his forces to enter the ward had been torn into bloody mist faster than any could cast a spell or raise their weapons.
With the ward spirit guarding their flank, the Royal Guard and Royal Magi were able to push back Araneus’ forces for a time, allowing the army to regroup and hold at the palace. Araneus’ troops were little better than puppets taught to fight and follow orders to the letter, then stripped of all free will. Efficient and effective against army regulars, but against the Elite of the Royal Guard, Araneus’ troops were little better than sacrificial lambs to the slaughter. Tens of thousands died in less than an hour as Araneus sent wave after wave of his soldiers to crash against the defenders, only for them to fail and die.
All according to the cult’s plans. Harnessing the power of so many souls dying violent deaths in the same place over a short period of time, his disciples completed the ritual to fuel his Ascension, allowing him to finally break through Diamond and into the realm of Mythril. Using his newfound power, Araneus ripped open the veil between realities with his magic and dragged the sacrificed souls back to Merinthia, using them as bait to pull the darker things that hid in the depths between dimensions into reality.
They came by the hundreds of thousands, lured by the easy meal of karma and ascension energy, and each was bound by his magic and forced to serve him. Their otherworldly nature caused havoc with the System, shattering the defenders’ ability to resist as his minions slaughtered them all. Araneus consumed the ward spirit whole, its ancient strength becoming his, and the Royal Family was slaughtered by his hand. The hereditary traits that made them powerful becoming his. Of course, he spared the Princess. She was a comely thing, and he needed someone to carry the heirs of his empire.
The Royal Family dealt with, Araneus sent his minions and disciples out into the city to crush the last of the kingdom’s forces and round up the populace. He would need more souls to expand his empire after all. Turning from the scenes of slaughter, Araneus smiled widely at the Princess Xin Long, bound and restrained against the wall and covered in the blood of her parents. She stared daggers at him. If looks could kill, he would be well into his next life in the Cycle from the venom in her eyes, but that just made it sweeter at her powerlessness before his magnificence. “Come now Princess,” he said with a sinister smile. “You’re about to be an Empress. Quite a promotion.”
Xin Long spat at Araneus, the glob of saliva disintegrating before it could get close to him. Araneus backhanded the Princess, his barely controlled strength shattering her jaw and knocking her out. “Weak,” he said watching as the Princess’s Platinum ranked vitality slowly repaired the damage.
“Primus!” A voice called out, interrupting Araneus’ fun just as the Princess awoke again. A man wearing the gold and red robes of an elder of his Cult entered the room, carefully stepping over the mutilated bodies of the former King and his Generals to kneel before Araneus.
“You’re interrupting me Linus. What is it?” he said quietly, pushing out his aura to press around the man’s throat in a razor thin line, drawing a trace of blood through the man’s Diamond ranked vitality.
“I-Intruders, Master! I-In the city!” Linus choked out.
“Then kill them you useless dolt!” Araneus roared, flexing his aura to smash a hole in the palace wall.
“W-We tried Master! The other elders and I sent a regiment of Voidlings to attack, but they were killed! All the elders who went to investigate were killed too!” Linus cried, feeling the razor sharp noose around his neck tighten.
The screaming coming from the city grew louder and more bestial, the sound of conflict moving closer to the palace. A dark shape flew through the air, flying perfectly through the new hole in the Palace wall to collide with Araneus, glancing off his shield. Voidlings were ugly things, a mass of tentacles, claws, fangs, and eyes with too legs and not enough heads. The half of the Voidling that hadn’t been disintegrated by Araneus’ shield was far uglier, leaking organs and a black, acidic blood that ate through the enchanted and reinforced stone of the Palace floor.
“Who is attacking?!” Araneus demanded, tightening the noose around Linus’ neck.
“A man and two women! I don’t know anything else!” Linus desperately tried to force Araneus’ aura back from his neck, but the Primus’ Mythril aura shredded his low Diamond aura instantly.
With a snarl, Araneus snapped his aura shut, beheading his useless disciple. “Surrounded by weaklings!” he roared as he summoned his magic and ripped all of his disciples’ souls to him, whether they lived or not. Disciples of the Cult of Araneus dropped dead throughout the city as their souls were ripped away and fed into the void, luring more Voidlings, Elementals, and even a Void Titan into reality. Consuming his disciples’ souls to power his magic, Araneus bound the entities to his will and commanded them to hunt the intruders down.
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A trio of auras blanketed the city and surrounding countryside, revealing every detail to their owners.
To the Northwest, Hurricane force winds flowed through every street, alleyway, and building and ripped the Voidlings into the sky where they compacted into dense ball. A spell of Decay slowly liquified the compacted remains, turning the otherworldly entities into fertilizer.
Tendrils of wind dragged pack after pack of Voidlings into the sky. Final bastions found their attackers ripped away as their defenses crumbled and hands tightened on last ditch weapons.
In the Northeast part of the city the buildings moved out of the way, creating a single straight road that led to the Royal Palace. Buildings shattered into rubble reformed into thick fortress walls, guarding the citizens who huddled in hidden spaces. The very city turned against the Voidlings, ejecting them from every road, alley, and building save the new road.
A lone man traveled down the road towards the horde of Voidlings. The man had dark skin with golden hair braided with beads and a grand beard, two rounded and furry ears sticking out of his head between the braids, and a wide smile on his face. His torso was covered in leather belts bearing all manner of tools and vials. An impractically large sword rested on the man’s shoulder, the blade as long as he was tall and wider than him. It looked less like a sword than an oversized kitchen knife.
The horde snarled as they spotted the lone man and charged with mindless rage. Casually, the man swung the oversized sword with one hand, bisecting every Voidling in reach as he let out a booming laugh. The earth raged beneath the horde as Voidlings were impaled by earthen spikes, swallowed up by holes, and crushed between walls of stone. Soon, all that remained of the horde was a lone Voidling that the man, still laughing infectiously, caught it with his off-hand and threw it at the tallest tower of the Royal Palace.
Shiori watched as a Voidling tore through the air, the shockwaves of its passage echoing throughout the city before it flew through a hole in the tallest tower of the Royal Palace.
Sighing, Shiori wrapped her twin tails around her human waist and unleashed her spell, teleporting every one of the Voidlings in her portion of the city into the same space in front of her. A cube shaped barrier flared purple as tens of thousands of Voidlings tried to occupy the same small space at the same time and exploded from the pressure. With a touch of her will, the remains vanished, and Shiori took another step, the heels of her shoes clicking on the bloodstained cobblestones.
With every passing second, those trapped under rubble or near death appeared in the city streets and were swarmed by strangers that hid behind fox masks. The masked strangers only spoke to give instructions as they cast healing spells and administered medicine to the wounded before moving on, dragging many back from the cold embrace of death.
Shiori stopped in the corpse-strewn square before the Royal Palace and was soon joined by Inari happily skipping down the road. The golden-haired man with the oversized sword joined them soon after. “Joyful Warrior Bearing the Heart of Mountains greets She Who Paints the Sky Black and Wind-Blown Messenger Heralding the End,” he said with a short bow.
“We don’t have time for that Saladin,” Shiori snapped as she flicked her wrist and summoned every red-robed cultist that hid in the city to the square, binding them in place before the broken gates of the Royal Palace. Her eyes narrowed on one of the cultists, a cruel looking man wearing red robes edged with gold. “You. What do you think you fools are doing?” Shiori said, pressing her aura down on the man’s soul.
Stolen content warning: this tale belongs on Royal Road. Report any occurrences elsewhere.
“I’ll never—wait! What are you doing! Sto—” Shiori ripped the knowledge from the man’s soul, killing him in the process. “They killed the Royal Family and thousands of Broken Souls to fuel their leader’s ascension to Mythril. He planned to build an Empire.”
“Idiots,” Inari muttered, her tails twitching.
“Agreed,” Saladin said, fingering his sword.
The three watched as the cultists’ souls were ripped away and fed into the Veil tear, their bodies dropping dead on the spot. A fresh horde of Voidlings dotted with Void Elementals spilled through the breach and started charging for the trio. The Void Elementals were dark, ever shifting things from the depths of insanity, hurting the soul to even look at.
As the horde grew, a massive hand gripped the side of the tear and tore it wider. A foot the size of a small ship stepped through the hole in reality, followed by the gigantic humanoid torso arm, and head of a Void Titan. As the other half of the Titan passed through, the hole shrunk slightly, but the gaping tear in reality still spewed forth hundreds of terrors from the Void every second.
“Massive idiots,” Shiori said, watching the otherworldly beings spill forth into reality.
“I’ll take care of the horde,” Inari said, her tails flicking as a tornado descended from the sky to tear at the Voidlings and Elementals
“The Titan’s mine!” Saladin said with a laugh as he ran off, leaping for the massive being with his sword out.
“I’ll handle the tear,” Shiori said, channeling her mana. Shiori tuned out the others’ fights teleported to stand before the gash in reality. Saladin redirected a blow from the Titan, sending its fist careening for straight for Shiori as she cast out millions of mana tendrils, her mind fully occupied in stitching shut the gateway to the Void.
The Titan’s fist raced forward, but never seemed to reach Shiori, the Titan stumbling as its missed blow sent it off balance. Saladin’s sword sliced through the Titan’s elbow sending the Titan’s arm tumbling to the ground where it crushed a dozen Voidlings beneath it. The Titan bellowed in rage and anger at the man that took its arm.
A tendril of wind picked up the Titan’s severed arm and sent it crashing through the rest of the horde, slaughtering the otherworldly creatures.
Shiori clapped her hands together as millions of purple tendrils of magic stitched across the void tear and pulled the edges of reality together, repairing the fabric between dimensions. Pushing her mana threads out from the sealed tear, Shiori wove a spectral seal across the city, stabilizing the fabric of reality in the surrounding area. Her task complete, Shiori turned to watch as Saladin continued to toy with the Titan while Inari contained the rest of the horde.
The Titan was on the backfoot, retreating in circles around the Palace grounds, a barrier of slicing winds preventing it from escaping into the City beyond. As it fled Saladin, the Titan threw ominous black spheres of energy at the man, though the barrage was ineffective as the man sliced through every orb of magic.
Spectral claws of purple magic formed around Shiori’s hands as she dropped down to the ground amongst the remaining horde and set to work shredding a path into the Palace proper. “I’m going for the lead idiot,” she sent out to her friends. The opposition Shiori faced thinned as she carved a bloody path through the horde, and soon she was alone amongst corpses in the Palace’s grand entryway.
A trail of corpses reeking of corrupt spirit magic led her deeper in and up into the main tower of the Palace. The shattered armor and shards of broken and bloodstained weapons amidst the corpses of humans and Voidlings alike told the tale of a fierce and bloody fight, one the defenders had clearly lost. The trail led to the top of the tower and into a private study, the fine wooden doors blasted into splinters. The former King and the leaders of his army lay in pieces around a strategy table, with the headless corpse of a cultist laying atop them.
Shiori’s eyes flicked up from the pile of bodies to a young woman restrained against the wall by foul magics, her Platinum aura flickering from exhaustion and abuse. A bald man wearing much finer robes than the dead cultist at her feet glared down at the battle outside.
The young woman’s eyes widened as she noticed Shiori, and she shook her head, her eyes pleading as she mouthed at her to run away. Shiori smiled at the woman as she unfurled her twin tails to lazily swish behind her, then turned to the living cultist.
“You must be the lead idiot,” she laughed mockingly, pulling the man’s attention away from the battle and to her.
“You!” he snarled, his eyes glowing a sickly green. Shiori felt as a sharpened blade of aura streaked for her neck, carrying the overwhelming intent of destruction.
“Me,” Shiori said, her smile widening as she let the aura blade strike the soft skin of her neck and fail to leave a scratch.
The crazed man recoiled from the backlash of his aura blade shattering, blood beginning to trail from his nostril. “Do you know who I am?!” he screamed at her, his Mythril aura flooding to smother the area with his presence. “I am Primus Araneus! An ascendant being! A god made flesh! How dare you disrupt my plans! For your crimes against my Empire, you will suffer until you break! You and your—”
“Oh shut up,” Shiori said as she hooked her spectral claws into the man’s aura and ripped it off of the man’s soul. The man’s eyes rolled back in his head and he collapsed unconscious to the ground, his head making a dull thump as it bounced off the carpet covered stone floor. Shiori took the man’s severed aura her hands as she dismissed her claws and deftly compacted it into a small sphere before turning to look at the Platinum ranked woman chained against the wall.
She was barely conscious, her armor shattered and body covered in wounds that still dripped blood. Her aura was in an even worse state, filled with spiritual wounds that it would never heal on its own. “You… What did you…” she wheezed, struggling to breathe.
“Shut up and eat this,” Shiori said, shoving the cultist’s aura into the woman’s mouth. The woman reflexively tried to spit the sphere out, but Shiori clapped her hand over the woman’s lips and lightly pressed down on her aura. “Chew,” she ordered.
The woman chewed obediently, crunching through the pill until it dissolved into a tasteless liquid and poured down her throat. Shiori nodded as the woman’s aura repaired and began to strengthen from high Platinum to low Diamond. Her body followed her aura and quickly regenerated, pushing shards of steel and clots of blood out. Her skin lost its healthy tan as it shed, revealing new pink skin and her deep brown hair lightened into a platinum blonde that faintly glowed with an iridescent quality. She stood straighter as she regained her strength and a flex of her newly strengthened aura was enough to snap the foul magics that had restrained her.
“What was that?” she gasped, staring at Shiori.
Shiori ignored the woman and gestured at the unconscious cultist, floating him up with her telekinesis. Without another word, Shiori walked out of the corpse filled room. Through her aura, Shiori felt as the woman paused at the King’s corpse to grieve for a moment before she picked up his bloodstained sword and charged out of the room, following Shiori. She finally caught up with her as Shiori stepped back out of the Palace to find the battle outside finished.
Inari finished gathering the last of the Voidling remains into her airborne ball of decay while Saladin willed the Titan’s corpse to vanish.
“Stop!” the woman yelled as she charged out from the Palace, the King’s sword pointed at Shiori’s back. “That man is a criminal and a murderer responsible for the deaths of the King, the Royal Family, and my people! As Princess Xin Long of the Kingdom of Shu, I order you to return the criminal for execution!” Princess Xin’s aura flared out to press down on the four of them. Inari and Saladin ignored her completely as if Xin Long’s low Diamond aura was nothing more than a breeze. The unconscious cultist began to bleed from his ears under the Princess’s aura, while Shiori turned to look at her, a single eyebrow raised.
“Sure,” she said, casually flinging the unconscious man to fall in a heap at Xin Long’s feet. Turning back around, Shiori continued walking over to Inari.
Staring at Shiori’s back in shock and confusion, Xin Long retracted her aura and stared at the man Araneus, unconscious and bleeding at her feet. “Araneus, we find you guilty of treason and regicide and sentence you to immediate execution.” Raising her father’s sword, Xin Long swung for Araneus’ neck, only for a scaly claw to erupt from his shadow and catch her blade!
A dark and twisted version of Araneus rose from his shadow and ripped the sword from Xin Long’s hand, a malevolent smile on its face. “I am Ascendant!” the twisted copy screamed, throwing the sword away as a new, heavier aura blanketed the area. “Bow before Araneus, for I am—”
“Void souled,” Shiori said from behind, her arm stabbed deep into Araneus’ back. “And dead.” Shiori ripped Araneus’ heart out, the purple veined black organ beating erratically as the Void soul disintegrated in a wisp of dark smoke.
Casually tossing the organ up and down, Shiori moved to Join Inari and Saladin with the still beating heart as Princess Xin Long fell to her knees, staring at the three. Her mind couldn’t process what she saw. The three of them were incomprehensibly powerful, a foe that should have spelled doom for the world no more than a plaything before them.
“A Void Heart!” Saladin said, looking at Shiori’s prize. “What a nice haul! What do you want for it?” The man’s fingers twitched as he stared at the black and purple organ.
“Nothing, but I wish to commission something, so you may work with it, Saladin,” she said, casually tossing the organ to the man.
“I can do much with such a fine specimen! What do you want? A pill? A weapon? Perhaps a defensive artifact?”
“A bag.”
“A…bag?” Saladin stared at Shiori with a look of confusion.
“A bag would be a waste! I could make you a weapon strong enough to wipe out a city with this!” he cried. “Besides, you’re a Master of Dimensional Magic, why would you need a bag?!”
“A school bag,” Shiori said, flicking her tails. “Besides,” she said, pressing the full weight of her aura down on Saladin. “Why would I need a weapon?”
“O-Of course, Shiori,” he said, taking a step back with a gulp. “But a school bag?”
“It’s a present.”
“A present?”
“She has a new kitten,” Inari giggled. “A very cute one.”
“A kitten?!”
“She’s starting school soon.”
“When did this happen?!”
Shiori’s aura flared again. “Stop asking questions and make the bag.”
“I-I’ll need a few days.”
“Get to work.”
Saladin sagged and vanished with the Void Heart, leaving Shiori and Inari in the destroyed courtyard.
“So what’re you going to do with her?” Inari asked, gesturing to Xin Long, the Princess still on her knees and staring at them.
Shiori shrugged.
“Mind if I take her?”
“Go ahead. I’m going to make sure Saladin makes my bag right.” With a flick of her tails, Shiori vanished, leaving Inari and the Princess alone.
Inari smiled warmly at Xin Long as she approached, the kitsune’s tails flicking playfully. “Hello dear, my name is Inari. I’m sorry about the loss of your family. Would you like to join mine?”