I looked out into the surrounding forest as the sun’s light began to dim. There were at least 15 of them if not more surrounding me in a damn circle. They were all wearing the same damn reddish robes that completely covered their lower halves. On the end of several of the robes, the fabric was clearly slightly tattered splitting into a bunch of squares. Probably done on damn purpose considering I'm talking about a cult. They all wore the same necklace too, the thing holding onto a bunch of small bones around their necks.

It was unnerving, just standing there in silence. They didn’t make a sound all they did was stare at me their faces covered by the shadows of their hoods. Until suddenly they all simultaneously took a step forward closing in on me stealing precious space. It was fucking creepy.

Yeah, hell no, I’ll be doing none of this. I glanced around me looking for the biggest gap between any of the cultists until I spotted it. It wasn’t much better than the rest and it was rapidly becoming smaller as they continued taking their creepy little synchronized steps toward me.

I bolted for the gap and as soon as in range with them they all lunged for me gripping my hide with their hands and forcing me still. That's when out of the corner of my eye I saw a larger figure emerge. It was wearing the same damn robes and bone necklace things as the rest of these insane fucks except for a couple of key differences.

For one, this one was wearing a fucking goat skull as a Halloween costume the thing attached to its face. Second, it held what looked like a staff, similarly made of…you guessed its bone. These guys clearly had a thing going on here. And they were going to do whatever cults go to lone stray animals they find to me.

Fuck. The one with the mask slowly walked to me before raising his staff and pointing it at my head. No no no no no. I struggled against the force of mass holding me down but quickly found that overpowering them wasn’t going to work. I was like an insect trying to move a brick it wasn’t going to happen. So instead I opened my maw and sunk my teeth into the nearest hand I saw.

I expected a sound, a grunt of pain at least. But instead, all I was met with was silence the hand not moving continuing to hold me down as I tore my teeth into it. The staff next to my head began to gather mana around it the purple light swirling around the staff before something shot out and hit me directly in the head.

Instead of pain like I expected, I was met with an overwhelming sense of fatigue. I could feel myself almost immediately begin to succumb to the feeling. My eyelids grew heavy like they were made of steel as they shut. Any attempt to open them was futile. This was more hopeless than breaking free from the cultists' grasp had been.

I couldn’t keep awake any longer and slipped into sleep. My safety and life in the hands of a cult. My fate up to their bidding.

<>

I awoke in a poorly lit room. I was on top of some sort of stone slab and upon moving I quickly discovered I had been chained down onto the slabs. I was fastened so tightly I couldn’t even manage a wiggle. At most I could move one of my paws fingers or my back leg’s toes but that was it. Not like they could move much anyway. There was no way it seemed to be able to break free.

I switched my attention from the chains to the surrounding room, if you could call it that. Despite it being so dark I could see fairly fine which was sort of surprising. I guess you could attribute it to my night vision skill but as far as I remember it had never increased in level. Maybe even though there is so little light that amplifies the effect of night vision? Well either way I could see pretty clearly.

As far as I could tell this was some sort of dug-out cave. Crude-looking wooden posts had been placed all over the walls, ceiling, and even the floor. There were slight gaps all over the place so I could clearly see was appeared to be dirt and ground behind the post. Other than that though, my room was almost eerily empty except for the single candle that had been placed in a far corner.

I along with the slab I had been chained to, was in the middle of the room. The shut door in front of me was similarly made of wood although more care had clearly gone into crafting the door than the wooded walls of this place.

I took a closer look at the slab I was atop of and quickly realized something as I smelt the air. This entire room was soaked with blood. That's…not good. My eye’s shot around the dark empty room again taking a deeper look. Little things that I had somehow missed before now seemed to stand out screaming for my attention.

A tooth wedged between one of the boards. Tiny bits of skin stuck on the slab glued down by dried blood. This place reeked of gore. I’m in a torture chamber.

I could feel my stomach tighten. My breathing accelerate, my increasingly fast heartbeat start to pound in my head. This was bad in the truest sense of the word. Nothing good could come from them putting me here. Why they hadn’t killed me and instead chose to drag me off into their layer, lock me up in this empty bloody fucking torture room, and do god knows what whenever they came back in here left me with nothing but questions and more stress.

One thing was for sure, I was stuck. These chains had gotten no looser than they had been a minute or two ago and all this twisting and struggling I was doing resulted in nothing but rubbing my ankles raw. None of this seemed to sink in though as I started gnawing at the chains instead, trying to break the shackles that held me down. This too only resulted in harming me as I yelped when a small fragment of my tooth broke off falling to the floor.

It snapped me out of the incessant chewing on the chains at least. In the end, I was left with nothing but my thoughts, I couldn’t escape the room nor the dread that accompanied it. All I could do was wait with an increasingly anxious look on my face.

<>

I almost managed to go to sleep before that damn door slid open. I had spent hours staring at the thing waiting for something to happen but was met with nothing but silence. Fear had taken hold of me and was twisting my guts preventing any rest I might have been able to obtain in the last few hours. But eventually, exhaustion inevitably won out, and just as my eyes started to shut that damn door creaked open.

Two figures stood in the doorway and from what I could see behind them this room seemed to be part of a hallway that was better lit than the room I was in. From where I was I could see two candles held up by sconces on the wall in front of the doorway that led out this room. They were a similar green flame.

The two figures in front were exactly what I had expected to see, cultists. They were still wearing those dark reddish robes from before and one of them looked to be dragging some sort of handcart behind them.

They were…different somehow. Back in the forest when they had surrounded me they all acted in unison, like they were all part of some sort of hivemind. The cultists in front of me now seemed to differ from each other, distinct. They walked and moved differently not so much in unison. As I watched them move into the room one turned their head to the other and did something I hadn’t been expecting, they spoke.

“###########################”, spoke whatever it is they had said to the other cultist. The words that rolled off their tongue had no meaning I could derive from them. It sounded nothing like any language I had ever heard on earth. I could tell from the voice that it had to be a man speaking but that didn’t really do anything to get me out of this situation.

The other one responded in what I guessed was the same language and they continued their conversation moving over to the slab I was on. The one dragging the cart behind him pushed it in front of the slab and at a single glance inside my stomach churned.

Several small blades, needles, and what looked like pliers as well as many other metal objects filled the cart. All the tools were organized on the cart, put into their respective places drawn out by some substance similar to chalk. The blades were all different each having their own unique spin in order to inflict pain a little differently. Some were a little thinner and longer, others a little thicker but shorter. Edged and sharpened in different manners and on different sides. Some of the blades had curves for some terrible fucking reason.

There were needles of all different lengths and widths. I could see what looked like a medieval version of pliers among the tools and many other things.

I managed to direct my vision somewhere else and looked up towards the cultist who were still causally continuing their conversation as one of them reached in and picked up what looked like a scalpel almost.

The man ended the conversation and moved over to the other side of the slab I was chained to. He positioned the scalpel and then he cut. It wouldn’t be the last time.

<> An Unknown Amount of Time Later

I opened my eyes groggily at the familiar sound of that door sliding open. About as usual a couple of cultists walked in but they weren’t dragging any manner of torture weapon behind them, at least not that I could see from where I was.

I did notice that one of them was carrying what looked like some…green crystal? I was confused staring at the thing and was about to analyze it but at a closer look at the thing, I realized it was the same thing that hobgoblin had planted in its chest.

It had just been so damn long since I had seen the crystal that I didn’t recognize it. At the mention of time, I absent-mindedly wondered how long I had actually been in this poor excuse of a room. There was no way to keep track locked up in some underground dungeon without a sun to tell me when the days passed.

I was fairly positive I have been in here for at least around a year but I could never truly be sure. In the begging when they first started the, er sessions I guess you could call them, I couldn’t really keep track of time.

I was stabbed, beat, burned, pierced, had my teeth pulled out, toes severed, and basically every method of torture I could think of. I would get hurt someway by the cultist and end up shivering and shaking unable to concentrate or rest because the searing intense pain never went away.

Eventually, I’d end up passing out due to exhaustion or the pain itself but I’d quickly be woken back up to experience some fresh new hell they had thought up to inflict on me. The beginning had been the worst by a long shot. Eventually, the resistance skills started coming in after a while. Blunt, slash, burn, and things like bleeding started showing up and I could actually think a thought without the constant torture keeping me too distracted.

Of course, the higher the resistance got the more severe the torture inflicted would be. They made sure that I was never permanently affected aside from scars. When they started severing my toes after each session I was either fed some sort of healing liquid from a vial or healed by the ringleader with that bone mask.

After what I reckon was a few months, I finally felt like I had free time in between the session to stare at walls and such. Initially, I had been using analyze endlessly on everything around me but after a single level up, I quickly realized the skill wouldn’t progress any farther. It seemed that repetition wasn’t enough and simply analyzing the same wall or planks over and over wouldn’t do it. By now I had done everything, the differing cultists, the tools they used, and whatever else I had available to scan which wasn't much. Just not enough variety I guess.

As I looked at the crystal I realized I had completely forgotten what its purpose had been and analyzed it.

Analyze Results:[Creed of Eluplarity’s Sacrificial Crystal: A crystal constructed by the Creed of Eluparity’s cult. The crystal is a necessary item in a ritual to provide a host body for the cult’s patron goddess Eluparity. The crystal causes anyone near or embedded in it to become extremely aggressive and unresponsive to pain. The person or creature embedded with the crystal has all these effects except amplified. As well as this they gain immense strength, the amount depending on both the creature's current strength and the crystal’s limitations. In order for a creature to have the crystal embedded in them and become Eluparity’s host body, the creature must have an extremely tough body. As well as this the creature must be previously familiarized with the crystal or other crystals.]

If I remember correctly that wasn’t much different than before but then again there were many gaps in my memory, too much time spent in this place. However, I'm fairly certain the insight about how the host body ritual worked was new. Not only new but it provided answers I had been to questions I had been wondering about for almost the entire duration of the time I had spent locked up in this place. Why the hell were they fucking torturing me in some goddamn cave!?

They were turning me into the host for their stupid goddess that's why. Why they had selected a random animal and not one of their own obsessed cultists couldn’t be answered but whatever. My eye’s followed the cultist as they placed the crystal on the floor near the slab.

They then stood up and started conversing which I listened to because there was nothing else to do chained up in this shithole. I had been spending what felt like maybe a month or two trying to understand whatever these freaks were saying but I hadn’t made much progress except for a few words. Those words being the names for the tools they used to cut me to pieces on the daily.

It was hard to make much progress when the only time they really talked I was too busy going through excruciating pain. Honestly, I found it amazing how I hadn’t gone batshit insane yet. If I had to contribute it to something it would be the unbridled, unyielding hate I held for these people.

My mind constantly ran rampant with fantasies of inflicting even a fraction of the fucking pain they had done to me. It was constant, every time one of the hooded bastards entered my vision all I could see was a mangled corpse. They had certainly taught me plenty of ways to hurt people.

One of them reached into one of the wide pockets in their hood and pulled out a small thin dagger. Looking at it I was more surprised than scared. I hadn’t seen one of those in a while. In the beginning, they had used them a lot but eventually, I got a skill, tough skin, and the blade was much more difficult to use on me.

I couldn’t remember the last time the skill had leveled up but it was probably around 6 or 7 by now. The cultist paced over in front of me as they held down my front right paw and positioned the blade. I would have loved to dig my teeth into their hand and turn it into a worthless piece of mangled meat but I couldn’t. The other cultist had positioned behind and placed a muzzle on my head. He then hooked up the extremely tough leather tie on the back to a thin metal poll behind my body that was attached to the slab. I couldn’t move my head no matter how much I wanted.

For all the resistance, defense, and even self-healing skills I had gotten here I hadn’t got any stronger offensively than I was before. I was no stronger than I was when I was first captured and I had been stuck at this cap ever since.

This tale has been unlawfully lifted from Royal Road. If you spot it on Amazon, please report it.

I certainly thought that I could currently destroy the previous me but that would be because of my defense alone. I glanced down at my paw as the cultist inserted the scalpel the blade drawing blood as they drew a straight red line across my paw. And just as I expected upon removing the blade the wound rapidly closed and scabbed up in a mere few seconds before the cut disappeared altogether. As I watched the cultist observe the cut he stood up after a few seconds and a few more words with the other cultist before they promptly left after removing the muzzle and placing it in the corner of the room.

I really didn’t know why they bothered doing that, maybe it had been some sort of test, but at this point, I could regrow a tow after a few hours if got cut off. Rapid Healing was a pretty high level at this point and could even manage that.

I glanced in the bottom corner of my eye at that crystal they had left there and stared at it uneasily. It was a problem. If things continued at their current pace I had no idea how much time it would take for this ritual they were preparing for to actually happen and my body to be stolen by some bitch in the sky or wherever the hell she was, while I was left defenseless.

This might be doable if I had enough time. I needed a way to destroy that crystal and slow down this process a bit. As hopeless as things seemed today had been very enlightening. I knew what they wanted with me and I knew what they were going to attempt to do to me.

Either way, I need to destroy that crystal and get more time to find some way to get out of this place. I really would have thought more about this but this whole thing has just been too much. I only was able to actually construct a structured thought months after the initial torture had begun. It had broken me for a little while. I couldn’t see past that door, I couldn’t formulate escape plans, I couldn’t do anything but endure the constant agony and dread the opening of that door. Fear and pain had dominated my thoughts.

Even now, staying above the abyss that is insanity had proven unexplainably difficult. I had to shut reality out sometimes, pretend it wasn’t happening like it was all some game. Escape while certainly yearned for it, seemed so far out of reach that I never considered it as a real option. But now, I was doing better both mentally and physically. The skills I had required had dampened the suffering I was put through tremendously. Nowadays I hardly felt most of the stuff they did to me. Which I really would consider a bad thing if not for the fact that the resistance and the self-healing prevented any permanent damage. On top of this it wasn’t like I didn’t know what was hurt, where it was hurt, and the severity of which I was hurt. I was actually fully aware probably even better than before.

Whenever a part of my body was wounded I instinctively knew where the wound was and how severe the wound was. Probably a side effect of pain resistance that becomes more pronounced as the skill levels up if I had to guess. Anyway, the point was I could handle what the cultists were currently doing relatively decently right now. The thing is that was bound not to last for long. While this was certainly the best I had ever fared against the pain it wasn’t the first time something similar to this had actually happened. The cultists tended to inflict damage to me over and over for days and days as I did better and better with it until eventually, the pain grew bearable. After that, they would take a huge leap in the severity of the torture and the process would start all over again.

It was much harder to think of and formulate plans when you are being put through insufferable agony constantly that takes up your every thought. In other words, I was on another clock, one that lasted until they increased the severity of the torture again and I was mentally crippled for a little while.

I didn’t know how much time I had left but based on previous experiences I knew it couldn’t be more than a few days so I had to think up something to destroy this crystal before then or I was fucked.

Thinking back there were gaps in my memory like how I had completely forgotten about the host crystal thing that goblin had been subjected to. I couldn’t physically harm the crystal as these restraints prevented any chance of me getting off this stone slab. That left me with the one and only option I could think of. Mana.

I could certainly see the stuff and the numerous times I had been healed by the ringleader cultist with what I guessed was healing magic, I had seen mana channeled through the staff and change colors. I could watch it all I wanted too problem was I couldn’t interact with it.

Despite the memory gaps, I doubt I would ever forget something like learning a magic spell. I truly recalled nothing about the subject. Well fuck, I’m screwed then. I’m about positive the only time I ever did anything involving mana was when I had spent a bunch of skill points to get mana sens-SKILL POINTS.

Please please for the love of God tell me I have some skill points!?

[Skill Points Available:100]

Like a godsend, the screen appeared in front of my eyes.

Ok ok ok…I need something that lets me control the mana I have. Something versatile, with a large number of uses. I tried waiting for a second but nothing was popping up. You really did need to state the exact name now that I thought about it. It had been like that before its just been so while since I had seen this thing. Usually, the system names were pretty game-like so something along those lines. Or maybe I should just try saying the name of what I think the skill I want would be called.

Mana…control? That's a no. What about Mana Manipulation?

Skill Points:100- you have enough skill points left for the requested Skill(Mana Manipulation)- Would you like to gain Skill(Manipulation) Yes-No

I glanced at the screen feeling a fair bit hesitant. If this isn’t what I think it is I’m probably going to die. I thought about it for a moment and figured if I didn’t take it I would also probably just end up dead. High-risk high reward.

[Yes← No]

[Skill Mana Manipulation LV:1 Learned] Remaining skill points left:0

The skills built-in manual as usual gave me some instructions on how to use the spell but it seemed they were going to be less helpful than they normally were. Just as I wanted I had gotten a versatile skill and it seemed to have near-limitless possibilities for just all the ways you could seem to use it so the instructions were more of a “basics of the basics” deal.

I knew from the skill’s how-to that using one's hands made the whole deal a lot easier but seeing as both my hands weren’t really hands they were wolf paws and that whatever little help I could have gained from using them was prevented by them being cuffed down to a stone slab.

I guess I’d just have to do my best with what I had.

<>

After a few hours of non-stop practice, I had managed to make some progress. Mana sense had to be some sort of precursor for mana manipulation because there was no way you could use the skill properly without it. I mean how could you manipulate an element you couldn’t see. I had quickly discovered why the skill had recommended using one’s hands to serve as an exit point for their mana. You couldn’t just take control of mana around you it had to be your own at least at this level or with this skill. Said mana was located in your own body, using mana sense I could see it appeared to flow along with my bloodstream. To actually do anything with it you needed to force it out of your body.

The skills instructions told me I needed to select an exit point for the mana and it had recommended hands. If I were still a human I would probably have used my hands too. Hands were a part of the body a person has extreme control over after all it probably helps with forcing the mana out by doing it through your hands. I of course didn’t have this option.

My feet were nowhere near human hands not to mention they had been chained down to slab for ages now. The most I could really do with them was wiggle my toes a little. It just absolutely paled in comparison to humans' hands. So instead I opted to just use my maw to force mana out.

It had taken an hour or two of trying but eventually, I had managed to force the mana out through my throat. Then I started actually using the skill but level one is pretty minimal the most I can do is semi-control where it goes. I had tried making shapes using the mana but all I can really do is nudge it. Another couple hours or so and here I was finally managing to compact the mana into a crude excuse for a circle but it was certainly better than nothing I guessed.

At this rate, though I doubt I’ll have made enough progress before my time is up. I glanced down at the annoyance of a crystal. I would make the damn thing explode somehow.

<>

At least 3 or 4 weeks had to have passed since I had obtained the Mana Manipulation skill but I couldn’t be sure. Something had happened to the cult although I didn’t know what. What I did know was that they had completely stopped my daily torture sessions. I would have thought them all killed by a group of mercenaries or something, kind of like how the wolves I had been born with had been wiped out, if not for the fact they still fed me the same shitty meal every day.

Well, that was probably a good thing, I wouldn’t want them wiped out and have me left here to starve to death after all the shit I've gone through. Plus, I shouldn’t look a gift horse in the mouth I needed time and it appears I was getting it.

I had progressed quite nicely compared to before when using Mana Manipulation the skill being level 7 now. I looked at the perfect sphere of mana in front of me and using Mana Manipulation I had it spin around my head kind of like a planet on its orbital. I changed the shape and had it take the form of a perfect cube instead of a sphere and spun around in front of me. I then tried to send the cube away from me as far as it could possibly go which wasn’t quite the wall but about 3 or 4 inches away from it.

I found that If I condensed mana enough it became physical and could interact with objects instead of just phasing through them like usual. For example, I could use the cube to slightly nudge the muzzle mask in the corner of the room.

I didn’t do this very often however because I didn’t know whether the cultist could see the mana in that state or not. When one had come in to feed me I had tested to see if they noticed my own transparent mana before I compacted it. I had basically slowly pushed mana out of my mouth and in front of their face trying to make it seem kind of natural in case they did notice. The cultist never noticed a thing though and simply walked out the room so I was fairly certain that most of the cultists except the ringleader didn’t have any version of mana sense.

After I was done playing with the cube of mana I had made I got rid of it how I usually did the last few weeks. By shoving it right into the sacrificial crystal. Not like it had been doing anything. It just dissipated after interacting with the crystal. I have no idea why probably something with the little mana the crystal was giving off but that was just a guess.

*Crack*

I immediately turned my head behind me and saw that a small crack had formed on the crystal. For some reason or another, the crystal had cracked after I shoved my mana cube in it. But that had been probably the 200th mana construct I had forced upon the cube why would it crack now? Maybe the crystal was absorbing the mana every time I forced a construct into it and it could only handle so much? That's about the most plausible explanation I can come up with.

Well, there would be a way to test no doubt. I could just continue a small stream of mana into it and see what happens although not right now the stuff takes forever to come back after I’ve used it all. Really all I've been doing is using mana manipulation so when I run out of mana I’m reminded of what I’ve got to do around here. Stare at the floor, walls, or door. The lack of activities makes it feel like hours pass before my mana comes back. And fuck maybe they do, honestly, my sense of time is more than a little wacky at this point.

Anyway, it would take it bit for my mana to “recharge” so that gives me a bit of time to think about how exactly I can go about this. How they react to it breaking might be an issue. Every single one of them so far, except the ringleader, has been seen to have no mana perception perk or any way to actually sense mana so they wouldn’t have a clue if I was pouring a stream of it into the crystal. Actually, as far as any of them are concerned they should have no idea I have any mana abilities.

I could probably get away with destroying the crystal and it being blamed on something else. But therein lays another problem. What does destroying the crystal actually do? I know it slows down the host ritual process but there could be other effects to think about. What if it negatively affects living creatures in the vicinity? There could be any number of things it might cause. But maybe I’m overthinking this, the description for the crystal itself didn’t mention anything like that.

…I could test with one of the cultists probably. Get them to notice the crack and move towards the crystal. Then destroy it once they get close and see what happens. Yeah, that seems like it could work. I would just need to time it correctly. The problem is I don’t know if I will be able to tell when the crystal is about to blow. Leaves me with no choice but to guess then. I only got one shot at this if I’m lucky. If I'm unlucky they figure out it's me and any future attempts are snuffed out. If they don’t realize it's me then I can do it one more time before they figure it out. In other words, this was my one and only test run.

Eh, no point in overthinking this if it doesn't work I die simple as that. If I do nothing then I also die. So that makes this my only option. I’ll do it very slowly over the next several days by streaming a small trickle of mana into the crystal. Then when I think it’s about to be destroyed I’ll save up my mana wait until a cultist walks in and goes near the crystal. Then I’ll force all my mana into the crystal and hope to god it crumbles.

<>

I’m fairly certain several days had indeed passed and the plan was working pretty well except for one new development. The torture had resumed. It just started up again with seemingly no timing in relation to when it stopped. It had made things A bit more difficult but still doable. The torture had indeed gone up in severity but not nearly the magnitude I was used to so it was endurable.

Whenever I have breaks from it I spend the entire time slowly dripping mana into the crystal the cultists showing not a sign of awareness to it all. A few more cracks had shown up but after a few days, I realized that I could sorta direct where the cracks form by where I injected the majority of the mana. I tried to stick to the undersides or at least on the backside away from the door so the cultists wouldn’t see it. The longer this goes on I’ve also noticed both that the cracks seem to be getting larger and that they are appearing more frequently.

I felt my mana reserves had been completely emptied as the trickle slowed to a halt. My eyes darted to the crystal examining it and it looked pretty bad on the sides and I knew for a fact it was far worse on the undersides but luckily unless the cultist actually went to examine the cube they wouldn’t notice anything. Tomorrow should do for the test run. In the meantime, my mana needed to replenish so I shut my eyes and tried to reposition the best I could on the slab. The chains made it annoyingly difficult. Might as well sleep while the mana recharges. Not much else to do around here.

<>

I had woken up what felt like a few hours ago. And surprisingly it had not been to torture. I’ve been shaken awake by the cultist so many damn times now I basically expected to wake up to it at this point. Seems they actually let me sleep today for whatever reason. Well, it served me better so I wouldn’t question it.

I had been slowly trickling mana into the crystal ever since I had woken up, taking occasional breaks to make sure I didn’t run out of mana and ruin the whole plan. Said plan which boiled down to waiting until a cultist or two walked in and then sending a decent burst of mana into the crystal causing it to crack. Once it cracked the cultist would inspect the crystal only for it to be hit by all my remaining mana hopefully breaking it. The rest would be a mystery until I actually went through with it.

I stared at the door for what felt like hours until I finally heard the familiar creak as it slide open and a cultist entered the room. I quickly went enacted step one sending a small burst of mana into the crystal as they neared the slab dragging their little wheel barrel of torture instruments behind them. To my immense relief, the crystal did indeed crack and fairly loudly as well. The cultist’s head twisted to look behind me to my right straight at the crystal.

I watched them pass me brushing up against my fur. Him actually, I realized as I smelt they were a man. He then knelt down behind me and observed the crystal muttering something in his language. I immediately sent all my mana into the crystal and was not at all prepared as a shockwave erupted from the crumbling stone launching the cultist on his back and sliding him right into the wall next to the door. The chain and shackle on my back right leg, which had been closest to the crystal, shattered as the wave hit me as well. The others remained intact however keeping me from being sent off the stone slab. My ears wouldn’t stop ringing as I quickly felt an immense and almost unbearably hot heat in front of me to the right. I managed to open one of my eyes and directed it at the cause of the scorching heat only to be met with a blazing green flame.

The ringing died down in my ears and was replaced with the agonizing screams of the cultist as the fire consumed him. His flesh melted as his hair burned off. His twisting and turning slowed to a stop as his muscles and joints were rendered useless by the flames. His screams too ceasing as the fire fried his throat. His body was nothing but a charred blacked husk before cultists burst through the doors and then quickly backed out away from the flames. The ringleader figure emerged from the smoke as they aimed their staff at the green fire. From the staff burst a blueish beam that collided with the fire and snuffed it out. Before it did though I managed to use analyze on the flames.

Analyze Results:[Namor’s Undying Fire: A bi-product of Namor’s Dust that results from a ritual stone or crystal that is both combined with Namore’s Dust and infused with mana is broken. The fire is extremely difficult to put out and common methods like using water, snuffing out, or even removing air do not work. It can only be put out via magical methods. The fire also has the quality of almost always burning what it first spreads to. Even if magic is used to put out the fire from an object or creature it first spread to it almost always will re-ignite until the object or creature has been completely burned.]

My pupils could’ve widened while reading that it was so wonderful. There was my method of both escape and a way to bring upon the death of every cultist in this damn cave. I couldn’t help but grin or do the wolf equivalent of it as I gazed at the burnt corpse. I would make damn sure they all looked like that eventually.

Cultists rushed into the room many of them heading to me as they checked the shackles and chains. A new cuff was quickly placed around the leg it had been broken off and I couldn’t do anything to stop the fuckers as they had muzzled me almost immediately. I really couldn’t wait to kill them.

I watched the ringleader in the back staring at the remains of the fire. I should be fine as long he doesn’t realize I caused it.