BOOK ONE

THE SEAL OF THE MANTICORE

Of all the ways the Morholts tortured Redmane, he hated starvation the most.

They had been doing so for a week now. And his cell, not by coincidence but intentional malice, sat adjacent to the castle kitchen and larder.

Throughout the day he smelled vegetables and fruits and aromatic herbs, perfectly seasoned roasts turning on spits, drops of their fat sizzling as they dripped onto the hot coals beneath them. He smelled the yeasty warm scent of fresh baked bread coming out of the stone oven, heard the viscous bubbling of fragrant stew in the great iron cauldron over the main hearth, smelled frosted fruit pies and pastries cooling on a window sill, their crusts crisped to perfection around hot, gooey centers.

Deprivation had a way of making his senses keener.

The first few days and nights were a blur of pain, as they always were.

Every fiber of his being wanted to spend them reaching through the bars of his cell, the manacle carving a burning groove into his ankle, its chain pulled taut, crying out for a scrap of something, anything. With the muzzle on his face they wouldn’t be able to make out his words, but it wouldn’t have mattered. The cooks and kitchen maids acted on strict instructions. Even the kind ones had to force themselves to ignore his pleading.

But he didn’t do any of those things. Instead he sat in the deepest shadow, the corner of his cell farthest from the door, and suffered in silence. He didn’t want to give the cruel ones the satisfaction of seeing him beg. And he didn’t want the nice ones to be troubled by it either.

In the dark and quiet, anger sustained him.

He could bear it because he knew that after the initial days and nights of agony, the intensity of his hunger would begin to fade, as it had a tendency to do. In its place came listlessness, weakness, a dulling of the mind. Even his scrawny limbs felt like they were made of lead. The dark stone of his cell grew colder against his emaciated frame.

Redmane did not know why they kept him in a cell, chained to the wall. Simple sadism, he supposed.

But he knew precisely why they kept him muzzled.

His Skill.

—

Omnivore

Bloodline Skill (Monstrous)

Rank 0 - Evolution Possible

Passive

The Monster derives sustenance from anything, and its digestion produces no waste. Its teeth and jaws can chew through most substances with sustained effort.

—

They weren't sure if Redmane could eat his way out of captivity, and they didn't want to take the chance.

He'd been their prisoner so long he’d lost count of things like seasons or years.

So long the concept of time lost all meaning.

It seemed that his memories began in this cell. Nothing before it existed.

If he had a life or a home or a family outside this awful place, it was so far gone in time he couldn’t remember a single detail of it.

To the Morholts he was a curiosity. A freak to show their guests. A living trash disposal.

His diet consisted of scraps, bones, and stinking guts. Redmane didn't mind it so much, since his meals tended to come when the kitchen was alive with pleasant scents he could focus on while eating whatever offal they threw at him.

He ate quickly, but he always saved a little for the rats. Aside from one or two kind cooks and kitchen maids, they were his only friends.

But sometimes the Morholts fed him things for a different reason.

Sometimes they fed him their mistakes.

To dispose of the evidence.

Redmane recalled the night he heard the Lord's nephew Aric quarreling with the head cook about this latest one. He and the senile Lord Morholt had been out fishing at the banks of the Bear River behind the castle, when it washed up on the shore.

At least that's what Aric told the cook.

It wouldn’t be the first lie he’d ever told. Nor the first time he’d starved Redmane, so that he would eat a corpse.

"It looks Numantian," said the cook.

"All the better to make it go away then."

"Does my kitchen look like a sepulcher to you?" said the cook.

"Roll it up in a rug and find somewhere out of the way to keep it," said Aric. "Starve Little Redcap for a few days, he'll gobble it right down."

Aric Morholt was the runt of the family, and a bastard, if the rumors were true. The Morholts were all blond with green eyes, whereas Aric's hair was black as coal and his eyes were a pale blue, like ice. With the Lord completely witless in his old age, and his heirs either dead or living out their lives in more civilized places, the bastard Aric Morholt was the de-facto ruler of Häerz Castle regardless of his dubious claim to the title itself.

When the Morholt children were young and still lived at the castle, they would tease and torment Aric about it. And in turn, Aric would come to Redmane's cell full of rage, to torment something even weaker than himself.

It took Redmane some time to figure out why.

He concluded that the weak hated the weak. Which meant they despised themselves most of all.

In his more lucid moments, Redmane thought he'd rather gobble up young Aric Morholt instead, alive and screaming. But that day would probably never come.

What did come, whether he wanted it or not, was his next meal.

Soon after the dawn of the following morning, the burly head cook unlocked Little Redcap's cell and two Morholt family soldiers came into the room, clad in chainmail with white House Morholt tabards over the top bearing its heraldry; a black bear wielding a battle axe, with a red shield for a backdrop. One soldier held a catch-pole with a C-shaped head, the other was armed with a club.

"Breakfast time, little beastie," said the soldier with the catch-pole.

Redmane was half as tall as a man, and less than half as heavy. But all the same, he glared up at the soldier as if they were equals. One day they would make a mistake, remove his muzzle too early, and he’d bite someone’s foot off at the ankle.

The soldier shoved his catch-pole into Redmane's neck, pinning him against the stone wall.

The room spun. Redmane croaked out in pain. Then the other soldier came over and clubbed him on the head a few times, laughing at the doglike whines and yelps the small demi-human let out. The blows left throbbing pain points on his forehead, cheek, temple and shoulder. He felt blood trickling from one on his face.

Dazed by the beating, he couldn't bite at the soldier when he leaned in to unlock and remove the muzzle.

The cook shook his head and walked away, and the soldier with the club went to fetch Redcap's dinner. He tossed the cadaver into the cell and it landed on its back. Only then did the soldier with the catch-pole remove it and step away, his weapon held at the ready in case Redmane decided to take a bite at the wrong thing.

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Redmane cautiously approached, sniffed at the dead body, crawled closer to it with an eye on the soldiers standing over him.

It didn't look like any kind of person he had ever seen before.

The body had been stripped of all its clothes and possessions. It looked like a male, except there were no genitals. And the flesh was the color of a bleached skull, not from death or decay. In fact it looked as though the body hadn't begun to show any signs of decay at all, even after a week or more. Its skin looked alive and lustrous, despite its odd color.

Its eyes were also strange. Two orbs of glossy black staring up at the ceiling. No irises or pupils. And its facial features looked quite fine. Regal, perhaps. A strong chin and jawline, high cheekbones, an aquiline nose. A mane of long white hair cascaded down between its shoulders.

But despite those strange signs of vitality, the thing was certainly dead.

The huge claw marks across its muscular chest seemed to rule out Aric Morholt as the culprit as well.

Redcap sniffed it some more. No stench of decay. Perhaps this meal wouldn't be so foul after all. His stomach rumbled at him powerfully and he gave in to it. He grabbed hold of the corpse's sleekly muscled arm and bit into its shoulder.

The meat was cold, but it tasted good.

Better than good. There was energy in it. Power. He chewed a bite and swallowed, and it felt like ice rushing through his veins.

Redmane attacked the body with his jaws, gorging on it. The strange, cold strength flowed into him. He couldn't get enough of it.

But then something strange happened.

A message appeared in his mind's eye.

You have consumed Divine Flesh

Do you accept Astral Communion?

Yes/No

Redmane blinked, stared straight ahead.

This was the System.

Everyone had been talking about it lately. The Numantians brought it here. It was going to change the world, they said. And it was talking to him!

He had no idea what Astral Communion was, but he didn't care.

It sounded like power.

He focused on the 'Yes' and the System seemed to get the message.

You have accepted Astral Communion

Evaluating Corpus...

Evaluating Gnosis...

Redmane felt a strange sensation. The cold fingers of some spell scanning over his body and mind. The room began to spin again, but not from a soldier's club this time.

The two Morholt soldiers looked at each other, confused. One jabbed at Redmane with his catch-pole.

"Oy. Little Redcap. You dyin?" he said.

Little Redcap. Aric Morholt was the first one to call him that.

How he hated that name...

"Maybe the meat's poison." said the other.

The first soldier shrugged. "One less shit job on our list then."

Redmane's vision blurred.

Then pain wracked him from head to toe.

His bones cracked. His muscles ripped. The scrawny monster gasped for air, doubled over, and when he coughed blood spattered the stone floor. Something was happening to his body, it was twisting and contorting. Convulsing. Stretching out as if he'd been laid on a torture rack. The room was truly spinning now. His vision was double, or quadruple.

Strangely, he heard the Morholt soldiers echo his screams.

He tried to focus on them. It looked like they were in pain too. There was a crash in the kitchen, like someone dropping a load of pots and pans.

All he could hear was screaming, everywhere. As if a Skill had gone off, making everyone in the castle lose their minds at the same time.

Then, as if a switch flipped in his mind, he fell on the floor and passed out.

And in the dark, he dreamed.

He found himself standing on a round red hill, under an orange sky. When he looked down he saw why the hill was red, and not only this hill, the whole field he stood upon, as far as his eyes could see in any direction.

He stood upon a vast pile of dismembered body parts, slick with bright red blood.

There was a feeling of transit through space and time. It felt like swimming.

And then he was in a cavern. At the edge of an underground river with tall green grass at its banks, and bushes with violet leaves and bright red flowers. There was a natural skylight in the roof of the cave, which illuminated the surface of the water.

This was supposed to be a peaceful place. A place of rest and repose.

Today it would be a battlefield.

He was tall and porcelain skinned and armed with blade and spell. And he was not alone. There were five others who looked like him, all of them clad in white robes, bearing armaments of shining enchanted steel.

Their foe was a great bear. Its body the size of a house, its eyes like motes of red fire on a lake of ink black fur. Deep scars gashed and furrowed through that fur, proof of vicious battles fought and survived.

But this was no mere beast. It was a renegade demigod, who dared defy the divine order and thus was marked for elimination.

The great bear stood to its full height and let out a roar that shook the very stone.

His comrades loosed deadly spells as he leapt forth with blade bared.

The vision changed form, shapes and colors swirling around each other like oil on water.

He was in the hall of a great old castle. Sitting at the head of the table, a crown on his head, a golden goblet held high. His wives and children, knights and bannermen, all raised their cups in salute with him. Upon the center of the table sat an immense silver platter bearing a roast of crimson meat.

There was a gleam of bloodlust in everyone's eyes as they gazed at it, as if hypnotized.

Another blur. The color red. The sensation of claws tearing flesh, of bone snapping under the crush of strong jaws, of gulping down mouthfuls of hot blood, feeling the excess drip from his chin, splatter on the floor.

A feast with no end.

Time sped up. He saw vast battles. Five heroes rode at the head of a host of thousands of soldiers.

More blood. More flesh. Fuel for a boundless hunger.

Something subdued him. A great work of magic. His hunger stilled, and there was a strange, detached sensation of being taken apart.

Then there was only darkness and solitude.

For so long. For forever.

Redmane awoke from the dream slowly, found himself sprawled on the cold stone floor.

It was nighttime now. A ray of moonlight came through the small window at the top of his cell wall. He sat up, rubbing his eyes, and looked down to see what was left of the dead body they brought him.

There was nothing there. He'd consumed it all.

Then he noticed his hands. Held them up with his eyebrows raised.

They were huge. At least compared to what he was used to. The shape and proportions of these hands were much more human-like than they were when he lost consciousness. He still had claws for fingernails, but these too had grown and strengthened.

This prompted him to look down at his body, which caused another shock.

He was no longer a little demi-human. He was as tall as a man, taller than most men actually, and fair skinned, broad shouldered and long of limb, with powerful musculature. He felt over his face, realized his features had become quite human as well. All except for his fangs, which had thickened and lengthened, and his pointed ears, which had also grown a bit. The shock of red hair on his head was now a flowing mane of crimson.

A red mane. Of course it was.

A pang of pain in his ankle distracted him. The manacle securing it to the chain was now painfully tight because of his change in size. He frowned at it, pulled the chain taut to test its strength.

He looked up to see if there was anyone outside his cell, which is when he noticed they hadn't even closed the cell door. It sat wide open. They hadn't tried to put the muzzle back on him either, which was odd.

He was unconscious. It would have been easy.

Since he was not only un-muzzled but apparently unsupervised, he decided to try biting off his manacle. He took hold of the chain, pulled it taut between his hands and crouched over, opening wide...

When he bit down, his teeth cut through the cold iron as if it were a piece of fresh bread.

The manacle popped open. Redmane sighed and rubbed his ankle, and as he did so the System sent another message into his mind's eye.

Welcome, Imbued

Name Yourself...

He gave it the name Redmane.

Welcome, Redmane

You have entered Dungeon: Häerz Castle (Rank 1)

Tasks:

1. Slay Rodimir, Master of Hounds

2. Slay Castellan Caslav

3. Slay Lord Abrahm Morholt

Tasks Completed: 0/3

He knew the castle had a dungeon. Nobody called it that, it was just a small gaol.

But the System called the whole castle a Dungeon. Interesting.

Nothing looked especially different, besides his body. The cell was the same as it ever was.

Redmane cautiously stood up to peer out of his cell and see what was going on in the kitchen.

Something was indeed going on. He could hear it. Chewing noises. Crunching and slurping.

He put his hand on the door frame and leaned out.

The two Morholt family soldiers stood hunched over a table, eating something with their faces right in their meal, like animals. Between bites they grunted, growled, snapped at each other. It took a moment for Redmane to realize what they were eating.

It was a kitchen maid.

She lay across the table with her arms dangling off its edge, her glassy eyes gazing up at the corner of the room. The soldiers had ripped open her bodice and were eating her guts, spilling bright red blood and scraps of viscera all over the table and floor. Ropes of intestine spilled from the great hole that was her torso. Her ribcage gleamed white, already picked clean of meat.

Her name was Nadia. She used to sneak him cuts of raw steak, his favorite, when the cooks weren’t looking.

She was one of the kind ones.

Something hot expanded in his chest. It ignited and flushed his skin, made his pulse pound. A snarl came out from between Redmane's gritted teeth, deep and menacing, like a great cat or a bear.

The sound caused one one of the Morholt soldiers to straighten, and turn to snarl back at him.

He looked different.

A single twisted horn had pierced its way through the side of his chainmail coif. His eyes blazed red. His face was stained dark with blood, as was the Morholt family tabard he wore. Bits of gristle and flesh stuck between his sharpened teeth.

"Little Redcap's not satisfied with his meal, eh?" he said, in a guttural voice.

Beastman Soldier

Monster Type: Corrupted

Level 1

—

WARNING

Monsters are fallen, irredeemable beings. The System recommends their extermination, wherever they may be found.

—

Redmane's heart hammered against the inside of his ribcage.

He didn't need permission. He'd been ready to tear this whoreson's face off for years.