The gaze was piercing, invasive, and wrong. Sunday felt shivers in his soul and averted his eyes momentarily. Then, as he looked again, angered by his show of weakness, it was gone.
All that remained was the chanting of the cultists, the strangle cackling of the laughing horrors, and the sounds of the ghouls dying under the vampire’s attacks or scaling the massive walls protecting Blumwin. The singular pieces of stone from which the walls were carved wouldn’t have allowed for that, but the marks left by ancient sieges and wars had left them ruined and vulnerable.
Sunday felt disoriented and anxious for the first time this night. He was not ready to face whatever that being had been. He was not prepared to be any savior or hero to all of these people and the undead who wanted to use him for their gain. Who treated him as a resource to be cultivated—a crop they could water and reap.
A large part of him was angry at that. The time he had wasted trying to make his worthless talents to work, all the people he had met, all the spells… He felt like a child. What would he do? Slap away an army? Appear before the prophet of a mad god and try to slap him? It was utterly ridiculous. He was finally seeing reason in the Hunter’s attitude.
Some of the vampires turned on the cultists, but the strange chanting and shapes they had taken seemed to scare away the undead. Sunday saw a lord move like lightning and stop short of a cultist, his hand frozen and his eyes wide as he stared at the blood pouring out of the self-inflicted wounds. He pulled back, and tried again, only to scream in frustration. There was a circle of blood surrounding the cultists, but it was blackened and wrong.
With every moment the blood spread further like oil that crawled on the ground, and the vampires stepped away like it was poison.
“Corrupted blood,” one of the lords said. “Life, touched by a Divine. They’ve come well prepared.”
Sunday clenched his jaws. The vampires were the greatest force in the city along with the magi, and yet they were now made useless. The laughing horrors advanced on the normal soldiers and a vampire tried to join in, only for a twisted limb to splash him with dark blood.
The screams made all else dull for a moment, and soon the vampire was just a wiggling mass of melting flesh on the ground. He was one of the lesser vampires, but still… The black blood was too potent.
“This is a disaster!” Elora whispered. “We have to do something!”
Sunday agreed. It was not the street urchin way to give up in the face of adversity. And he was not the same as he had been mere weeks ago.
The cultists, save from the vampire hordes, turned on the magi who were preoccupied with ghouls next. They stretched their hands, holding them like they were cradling a ball. Sunday only felt a whiff of essence as wrong and twisted as the blood, before a mage screamed, then started cackling. The laughter soon turned into painful sounds, but he didn’t seem capable of stopping until another mage hit him in the back of the head.
Here we go. I’ve been picked for this, time to make it work.
“Vampires! Go for the ghouls! Magi, crush the believers!” he yelled.
And yet… his scream was drowned out in the cacophony of war. Few heard him, and even fewer listened.
The Visage of the Berserk Moon appeared behind him, larger than ever, and Sunday knew what he had to do. Tens of moths flew out of it, spreading over the battlefield and diving toward the cultists. His eyes widened as that achieved almost nothing.
Many of the laughing horrors tried to intercept the flying heralds of death. The cultists themselves brandished weapons and strange shields that seemed to be chiseled out of rock and stared at the sky waiting for Sunday’s moths to descend. Something was wrong so he stopped the charge of his summons, allowing only one to fall. A simple shield bash made it dissipate into a harmless cloud of essence, that while dangerous, the cultist avoided easily.
Fuck me.
At the same time, a ghoul jumped over the edge of the wall and Sunday spun, cleaving it easily in half with Jishu’s former sword. It took him by surprise. His instinct and his physical strength were many times greater. It seemed that a single ghoul was of no issue. He took the second sword he carried—the one taken from Versum—and gave it to Elora, thanking himself for not gifting it away.
The girl nodded in thanks. She was a rank one and her essence was limited so he had to protect her as well.
Let’s see how you deal with this…
A large beast walked out of the Berserk Moon and fell to the ground below the wall. It wept a few times before a mighty roar shook the battlefield on both sides. It seemed as if its presence alone made the ghoul waves hesitate. Then it charged toward the cultists.
Sorrow turned into anger under the moon. Hatred, fiery, and poisonous could be felt coming from the beast, and this time it seemed the cultists were surprised. Sunday hadn’t had much time to toy with the spell or even use it more than once. The Mournful Bear was a weird one, but the Berserk Moon made it into a terror in itself.
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Two of the laughing horrors got in its way, trying to stop its charge, but it was of no use. The beast simply trampled them and crushed them into pieces with its mighty paws. Sunday grinned. This was the heavy artillery. It had taken a lot of essence, but it was worth it.
And the current him had more to rely on, other than his spells and essence.
“Keep her safe, she’s a guest of the Baron,” Sunday said to the few lords who had yet to join the fight.
The Baron himself was nowhere to be seen, which was disappointing. Sunday doubted he had run, but if he was as strong as he claimed, then it was time to show it. Maybe Mera would make an appearance too? While the cultists were centered around the main wall and gate area—where the bulk of the forces were—it didn’t mean there weren’t many others around the city.
The purpose of the attack and the disturbance was unclear, but it had to achieve something. Otherwise, it was just a waste of resources. Even a Divine wasn’t that mad… were they?
Sunday unclasped his cloak and rolled his sleeves. One of the many moths he had conjured still hovered above. It was a soul moth, but it carried the buff of the Berserk Moon so he just let the essence permeate him. It felt good—like a good stretch of everything. The red hue of the moon washed over the night, bringing him into a scenery of black and red that made the world a beautifully tragic place.
One more.
The second moth gave him further strength, but the darkness pulled at his mind. He could barely distinguish the shapes of the vampires and the soldiers engaging both horrors and ghouls. They were just red inkblots on a tapestry as large as the world itself, and Sunday found himself smiling.
The cultists, and their monsters, however, were clear as day. Even clearer than before. Their shapes beckoned him like weeds beckoned a gardener.
Sunday could sense their presence, and something about them… something about them made the Berserk Moon that much more potent. Power churned inside him, washing his soul, and he jumped from the wall and into the fray on the inside of the city. Sunday himself turned into a beast similar to the Mournful Bear. The strength increase from Fable’s Strength was massive, and his newfound skill with the sword allowed him to rage freely against the laughing horrors.
They were weak. Ants to be cut apart by his sword.
He didn’t need spells in this moment, apart from one. Phantasmal Fall sent him falling forward, toward a group of cultists trying to aim at him with their strange ability that made people laugh until it was painful. He felt something slam into his mind, but the soul essence raging inside took care of that easily.
Good.
Sunday grinned as his fall culminated in a decapitated cultist. The second one he hit with a fist, and the man’s head burst from the force of the strike. His titles, and his buff, made him no lesser than a lord in this moment.
However, lords had no spells to aid them.
The cultists didn’t seem worried about dying. They fought back, screamed, and tried to use their strange shields against him, but all fell. Be it his fists or his sword, the force Sunday was capable of at this moment was overwhelming. His mind barely kept up with the slaughter.
On the other side, his berserk bear was crushing another bunch of cultists. They were more afraid of it for some reason. The creature was like an angry mountain and tramped anything in its way.
Sunday forgot about the ghouls. He forgot about the vampires or Elora. All that he knew was there was someone he needed to hunt down and punish. And they had shown themselves tonight.
***
Riya rushed through the tunnels beneath the Wayward Rat. The city was plagued by disturbances tonight, and she didn’t want to participate. She was so close to becoming more than a simple undead. So close to finally aligning her soul and body and stepping into the realm of magi. From there, it would be smooth sailing, but she needed more time to be perfect. Doubts still lingered in her mind.
Kallus had gone out to fight, excited that he had something glorious to do, which was all the better. He had been kept mostly in the dark since the wight had his personal sense of morals and justice and it often changed.
“Are you impatient?” a voice asked.
Mera appeared from a nearby wall as if melting out and away from the stone. Mesmer Steel had so many properties and ways to change and affect the material world it was almost impossible to keep track of them. She gestured for Riya to keep walking.
“Yes, teacher. I want to finally become someone useful,” Riya said. “I’ve played this game long enough.”
“There’s still time. Tonight, will not be the culmination of it all. But it might be wise to do it now if you feel ready too.”
“What do you mean?”
“The Voice of the Divine is moving against the city, but they have another purpose. This is not a bid to take over or slaughter the innocent. While madness rules the deities, the servants are often masters of reason and scheming. This is but a distraction timed well with the ghoul horde.”
Riya’s eyes widened. “Are they after Sunday?”
“Always. But not tonight. Tonight, I think… the Arcanum will suffer losses.”
“Won’t you help?”
Mera shook her head. “I’ll stop the monsters from harming the populace if they try to. Sunday’s chosen are also a priority to keep safe. That woman, Savia, is very resourceful indeed—she’s currently out fighting. I sent Kallus to help her. She was a good pick, and while she’s reserved, I’m sure she will come around. As for Vyn… his very status makes him important. His sister has risen quite highly.”
Riya still couldn’t quite grasp why someone like Sunday had to build a power structure, or why Mera was so insistent on allowing so many outsiders to get close to him. He was too important. A loose force like him, unclaimed by a large power and not bound by his duty was a chance no one had expected.
“Will he hate us?”
Mera remained silent. “His temper is wild and unpredictable. He’s still unsure of himself, unable to harness his strengths properly. What you’ll be doing is simply connecting to the source, and becoming closer to him. You won’t steal. You won’t harm him. You’ll be an asset like any other after the ritual, and he’ll be a fool to deny you that.”
“But is this right? What of those who have chosen him? I’ll be just a meddler in their eyes.”
“They won’t directly meddle in our affairs. Others have done what we have throughout ancient history. Apart from the master of the dark hounds, the others are just observers. A simple tribulation I’ll help with. There’ll not be—" she paused.
Her visage distorted and Riya could see the bits and pieces of Mesmer Steel making it.
“Teacher?”
“The assault on the Arcanum has begun, but at the same time, something very powerful is slowly approaching Blumwin. Not a Divine. Not a mage. I—I can’t see.”
“An enemy?”
“I don’t know. Do you have the lock of his hair and the vial of inferni blood?”
Riya nodded. “He still hasn’t noticed I exchanged it. Will it be enough?”
“It’s all we need. Just be patient.”