"Alright, let's make a plan," Glenn smacked his hands on the table Josh summoned for them. Javier watched without a word, his arms crossed and his face expressionless. They were in a cave they had found at the base of the Still Peak. For some reason, the climb to the top seemed much higher than before to Glenn, and he quickly gave up to choose a slightly less hard-to-access temporary headquarters. It wasn't like they were going to stay here for long anyway, just the time to gather their thoughts and energy. Josh rubbed the back of his neck as he stared at the table. The model of Palancar was standing there, made out of malleable dirt, from what the pale man could remember of the village.
'Quite the useful spell from a tactical perspective,' Diamanes commented with a groan of approvement. Glenn nodded imperceptibly and studied the plan of the village. Most houses were already built, while some were half-made, and others only had their foundation placed down. The most obvious building was of course the central one, a round, huge wooden construction with a sculpture of a woman opening her arms widely.
'Is it a woman though? I can't tell...' The young man thought, remaining silent on Josh's mastery of the spell. The model of the village was already pretty good, so he'll have to remain satisfied with that. The streets of the village all led to that singular, round building. Josh stepped forward and pointed to the said building.
"That's the Church. Everyone went there every day besides Toumu Toula, Javier, and me," His face darkened, "...And that's also where the red jewel is stored, where they made their grim offerings..." Josh trailed off and sat back on his chair, holding his chin with his fist. He then waved his other hand at the large fields surrounding the village.
"They mainly feed on wild game, but with how much they hunted the last week to feed everyone, I'm sure they'll be depending on the fields Tarana helped grow," He explained, taking his bow off his shoulder and verifying its string. Glenn rubbed his temples, lost in thoughts.
"Maybe we could create a distraction by burning off the fields?" He proposed, making Javier shrug wordlessly and Josh sigh.
"That would be a good idea if the fields in question weren't prepared for such eventuality. With the village's history of burning down to ashes, they prepared everything they could to defend against fires. Valer laid off at least two dozen spells who would swallow any flames appearing in Palancar's perimeter," Josh wrote fire in the table with the tip of an arrow and crossed it out. Glenn brushed his hair back, before pointing at a nearby river.
"What about poisoning their water supply? That would incapacitate most of them," He then suggested, before crossing that option out as well when Josh threw him a dark glance.
"The villagers are innocent of whatever devilry is going on there, and we already agreed on not killing them," He said with a dry tone, making Glenn bow his head slightly in apology.
"I'm sorry, Josh, but if we want to destroy the red jewel, we'll need to do it when the villagers are far from it. So it's either they all run to the latrines for a day or two or I blow them all away with a Blackhole and the matter is done," Glenn said with a wicked smile, impervious to Josh's shock. The young man had no empathy for cultists, brainwashed or not. He couldn't help but clench his hands and teeth when thinking about evil entities like the Thorn's Church or, in this case, the Mother. He could only think of how he should burn all of that to rid the world of its influence once and for all. It wasn't like when he was being tortured, now he had power, and he was going to use it.
Josh stood up, shaking his head.
"I refuse to do them any harm," The pale man said, his determination unshakeable. Glenn sneered and leaned forward.
"Even though they already killed one of your friends for their heathen god, you still want to protect them? Oh, but I know it ain't their fault, I know, but you're not even a little angry?" The young man clenched the side of the table while talking, crushing the rock it was made of under his grip, his anger growing increasingly. Josh's determined expression cracked down a little, and he stepped back wobbly. Javier only watched the scene, unmoving and unchanging.
"Listen to me, Josh. This is not your simple "kill the monster" operation, right now. This is a matter where an evil piece of shit is controlling time or space, or maybe both at the same time!" He yelled out, smacking his fist on the table, knocking down a few houses. Josh was about to retaliate, when the village crumbled a little more, even without Glenn's intervention. The young man followed his eyes, to find that the houses fell one after the other, like dominoes, until no houses but the central building was left standing. Glenn stared at the table with a dumbfounded look, then glanced at Josh, to see that the pale man was wearing the same puzzled expression.
"I'm sure it should have been a little more sturdy...?" With a wave of his hands and the mumble of a few words, the houses were back standing up, not in mud but in rock-hard stone. Javier suddenly stepped up and flicked his finger right where Glenn had previously slammed his fist, on the house the furthest from the center. The piece of rock fell, before making the house neighboring it following it in its crumbling, and then the next one, and the next one, until once again, only the central building was standing. The young man rubbed his chin while picking up one of the broken houses, the corner of his lips suddenly rising in confidence.
"Josh, can you explain how your modeling spell works exactly?"
Josh didn't answer, then suddenly flinched and leaned on the table, creating the model of the village once again.
"Uhm, yes, so what happens is, I send a wave of Mana that takes all the details from a designated area, and creates the model from said details. I obtain rough results because my realm of magic is a little too low, and I have quite a small Mana pool," The pale man explained, his face slowly lightening up as he understood where Glenn was going with that.
"Wait, are you thinking the houses were purposefully built with the intent of crashing down with the destruction of that one?" He asked with a bewildered look, tapping his finger on the trigger house. Glenn nodded slowly, and smiled widely, before tightening his tie.
"Javier, Josh, what do you think about waiting for these whackos to do their dirty ceremony in the Church, and destroy their whole village in the meanwhile? That should keep them busy," He chuckled, his left hand's fingers twitching. A mouth appeared in his palm, grinning evilly. Josh and Javier looked at each other, before smiling nervously. Well, only Josh smiled, but Javier had a kind of content look on his expressionless face. Glenn couldn't tell how he knew, but he knew.
"While they're all busy investigating the destruction of the village, we'll storm the church, destroy the jewel, and try to, uh, exorcise Tarana, I guess?" Glenn smiled, knocking down the trigger house one last time to witness the whole village going down once again. It seemed so far-fetched and yet...not so surprising? The question is, why would the Mother influence the workers and villagers to build the village this way? It was probably very impractical, and even though Glenn was no engineering expert, it seemed quite hard to simply make, even more in a week. There had to be some logic, some kind of intent behind this weird trap/execution device.
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"I like this plan more than the others. I hope everyone will be in the church when we destroy Palancar. Huh, to make an entire village go down certainly has an exciting feeling to it, weirdly," Josh chuckled, his eyes wide opened as he rubbed the back of his head with an awed look.
Glenn clapped his hands together, directing Josh and Javier's gazes back to him.
"Alright, we rest for tonight, and tomorrow..." The young man's smile turned devilish, the corner of his lips rising uncontrollably, "...We erase Palancar from the map."
'Heh, it's not like there was much on the map to erase, to begin with,' Diamanes mocked, making his host's eyebrows twitch. In those words, the three men agreed on their shifts and went to rest. Josh slept soundly, groaning in a discontent manner when he had to be woken up, while Glenn Meditated through it, putting himself back in almost peak condition. His ribs were still as broken as they were, but the pain seemed to have receded a little. The young man couldn't help but be thankful for the torture he endured back in the Thorn's Church's prison. Ironically, the Beast Blood he had been forced to drink was probably the only reason he was still alive today.
Javier spent his rest shift doing...well, whatever Javier does. It certainly wasn't sleeping, since he had his eyes wide opened, unblinking, and it wasn't Meditating, since said eyes were always following Glenn.
'Creepy bastard,' Diamanes spat, Glenn, nodding in agreement. He was grateful the pale hunter was on this with them, but honestly, he was still a bit scared of him. The young man's eyes suddenly went over to Josh, then at Javier, then back at Josh.
"Josh, can you explain something to me quickly?" Glenn asked, his eyes darting between the two pale men. Josh, who was sitting around a fire that Glenn had magically created, pointed at the opposite side of the flames. Glenn obliged and sat, before nodding in Javier's direction, the pale hunter standing guard while staring at the young man like a true CCTV.
"By any chance, do you know what's going on with him?" He rubbed his hands together, feeling a chill in his back as Javier's eyes were stuck on him. Josh glanced at Javier, before shrugging.
"He's fine. I'm the odd one, you know?"
Glenn sneered, before shaking his head.
"How so? To me, you're probably one of the most normal people I've met in this wor... country," Glenn coughed, swallowing back the word he almost used. Josh picked a dry branch from the ground, before burning it slightly in the fire, his eyes lost in the flames.
"Our people are all like that. Never heard of the Pale Kin?" He asked with an inquisitive tone, throwing the branch in the fire.
"...Never, but please explain," Glenn crossed his arms, trying to make himself comfortable on the ground. The pale man sighed, before picking up another branch and playing with it.
"As I mentioned previously, we name ourselves the Pale Kin, not because of the color of our skins, as you could probably have thought, but because of what we're carrying," He slowly explained, his expression gloomy.
"What you're "carrying"?" Glenn frowned, putting his hands over the fire even though he wasn't cold. Javier flinched from the entry of the cave but didn't say anything.
"Yes. No one knows since when it began, but our kin is afflicted with a Curse. Not a simple piece of magic like a Silence curse, no, we carry something more ancient, more mysterious, and impossible to get rid of..." Josh broke the branch in two, the corner of his lips drooping slowly.
"Our elders named it the White Plague," He spat out the name like even saying it was hurting him, before crossing his arms together and leaning against a rock chairback he hastily summoned. Glenn kept his mouth shut, reserving his question for when the pale man would be done.
"The Curse progresses in four stages. The First one would be the pale skin, which is pretty easy to live with, at first," He laughed derisively, his shoulders dropping and his head leaning forward.
"In the Second stage, our source of power is restricted, be it Mana or Aura. Fortunately, I've managed to become an advanced initiate, but that's as far as I'll ever get..." Josh breathed in deeply, his eyes stuck on the cave's ceiling.
"Additionally, our skin would become even paler, for some almost translucid," He pulled on the sleeve of his pants, showing his thigh. Glenn grimaced, his eyes widening at the bizarre sight. The skin was like glass, and under it was the blood pulsing in green veins, making a strange crimson contrast. The bone was barely visible under layers of white flesh and muscles.
"Wow, this is so...weird," He muttered, before chuckling and looking at his left arm, entirely purple. He didn't check the progress for a while, but it probably reached just below his shoulder.
'Don't worry, it's finally over,' Diamanes reassures him mockingly, snickering inside his mind. Glenn tried to ignore him but he couldn't help but breathe a sigh of relief. The thought of him becoming entirely purple already traversed his mind, but he always chose to deal with this worry later. At least now he knew he wouldn't become the evil version of the Minions.
Josh pulled his sleeve back the way it was, before continuing his explanations.
"The Third Stage, which Javier is already infected with, you lose little by little your emotions and your vocal cords rot, making it so that speaking itself is a true torture," Josh touched his throat while lost in thoughts. Glenn remembered the time his voice was stolen from him and frowned.
'How terrible...'
"The Fourth Stage...also the Terminal Stage, is a little different. If all the previous stages could be supported during your life, the Fourth One..." He smiled sadly, summoning a ball of rock and playing with it.
"If during the Third Stage, you lose all emotions, in the Fourth One you lose all desires. You don't want to eat, drink, live, or die, you don't want to do anything anymore. You lose your mind slowly and become less and less human while dying little by little without being able to do anything to stop it. And when we eventually die..." He threw the rock away, smashing it against one of the walls of the cave.
"...The Curse is given to two people around, while our body decomposes and transforms into a pale abomination, different for everyone. And the cycle continues, without ever stopping..."
Glenn hid his mouth behind his hand, before frowning.
"Wait, but wouldn't everyone be afflicted by the Curse already in that case?"
Josh shook his head and pushed himself up from the ground. He dusted off his pants, before stretching his body.
"Strangely, the number of Pale Kin existing is restricted. We can't be more than a few thousand, and the Nobles already know they can't eradicate this curse... It's not like they never tried, after all," He chuckled, before taking his bow from his shoulder and checking the solidity of the string.
"What do you mean?" Glenn asked, his chin leaning on his fist. Josh rubbed the back of his neck, trying to find his words.
"It's a story our elders often share, but I have no idea of when it happened. Someone around the King has been afflicted by the Curse somehow, and angered by the unstoppable loss, that King came down to the Pale District in the Sewers, where the ones at the Terminal Stage are left to die. He massacred every one of the Pale Kins there, then proceeded to hunt all the remaining ones, killing anyone with pale skin. Eventually, not a single one was left," Josh explained, testing the string by pulling on it, before frowning undoing the knot of the string to redo it.
"One week later, the King and everyone who assisted him became cursed in turn. The Generals, the Nobles, the Mages, the Soldiers, and even the Priests of different religions. No one was spared, and everyone became Cursed by the White Plague. They fought with all their strength but couldn't stop the Curse and eventually, all reached the Last Stage. They were then placed in the Pale District with the hope that they wouldn't contaminate the upper levels of King's Rise again. The only way they found to deal with it ended up putting all afflicted too deeply into the Pale District and leaving it to the gods to decide on our fate. The infected King disappeared and no one ever heard of him again, and someone rose from the Court to take his place," Josh smiled after finally ensuring that the bow was set to his liking.
Glenn gasped in awe, before rubbing his temples.
'Only a Greater curse can resist a weaker one...Shit, am I cursed with something at the same level as the White Plague? Fuck me...' He dejectedly thought, before shaking his head. Josh held his hand at him, which Glenn accepted without a second thought. He was pulled to his feet, and Josh patted him on the back.
"Time to destroy Palancar, then?" He said, smiling sadly. Glenn nodded, clapping his hands together loudly. The fire he had previously summoned disappeared without a trace. Glenn clenched his teeth through the pain of his broken ribs and applied an additional layer of ice on them, before standing outside of the cave. The sun was setting down, giving them the cover of the night.
"Let's do this," He spat out, stepping out with determination, followed by the two Pale Kins.