“Gift of monsters?” I asked, but the voice within the woman didn’t respond. The brilliance of her possession faded, leaving only the dull brown of her eyes.

She smiled and cocked her head, though the smile didn’t reach beyond her lips. “What’s the matter, child? You stare at me as if you’ve seen a ghost."

I was on my feet and across the room before Nida could even lower the pastry halfway to her mouth. My hand lashed out, fingers wrapping tightly around the woman’s throat. Though we stood at nearly the same height, I lifted her off her feet with ease, my grip tightening by the second.

“Who was that?” I growled. It wasn’t a question—it was a demand. She only cackled in response, but I cut it off with a quick squeeze, turning the laugh into a choking gurgle as I edged closer to collapsing her airway. “Are you an oracle? A seer? Or just a vessel?”

For the first time, her sly smile faltered—just for a moment—when I mentioned "vessel."

“W-wha?” she wheezed, the words caught in her throat.

“Ah, a vessel.” I sneered, tossing her across the room. She crashed into the drunken man’s table, knocking over bottles of ale. The man looked up but didn’t move, either frozen in terror or simply uncaring. “I knew something was off about you. And to think I slept under the same roof as something so pathetic.”

“What’s a vessel?” Nida asked calmly as she stood. Nasq was already on his feet, while Brianna sat frozen, wide-eyed at the unmoving woman.

“Some of the creatures this world calls Sires take… pleasure in human energy,” I explained, waving toward the woman. “Some take it by force; others accept what’s given willingly. A vessel is someone who enjoys having the energy sucked from their heart. Enjoys it a lot. To obtain the most amount of pleasure in the process, they link their hearts to a Sire allowing the Sire to drink from them continuously until the vessel becomes a husk.” I shook my head, peering down at the woman in disgust. “In my world, they aided Sires in the destruction and death of thousands of people. But worst of all is how they willingly become puppets - slaves, and invite a Sire to enter their very soul, as we just witnessed.”

“Oh, sort of like human cattle for vampires,” Nida quipped, taking the information in stride.

Nasq nodded. “I believe that is a fair comparison, though from what Her Grace says, this sounds far worse.”

“They are vermin,” I spat. My vehemence contrasted sharply with Nasq and Nida’s calm reactions. But they hadn’t seen thousands of their people slaughtered for heart energy by a ravenous Progenitor, betrayed by the primal urges of a vessel. I knelt by the vessel’s limp form and hauled her into the air by the collar of her brown dress. Her eyes rolled, her head lolling. “The effects are similar to an addiction to drugs or alcohol. When she takes damage, it increases her vulnerability to the absorption thereby hiking up the pleasure.”

“So the Sire feeds off her energy?” Nasq asked, studying the woman with a look of intense curiosity. “I didn’t know that was possible. I’ve heard of techniques for nullification or cancellation, but nothing like this.”

“It might be the Human Sire,” I answered, still using the term Sire as I hadn’t explained the term progenitor to them yet. “Might not be a Sire at all. It sounded like the creature speaking through her was only a messenger. Perhaps a less powerful Sire was made to develop the message. Honestly, I am surprised it ended only with that considering what I have in storage,” I muttered, referring to Orpheus’ core abstractly so only Nasq and Nida would understand. I shrugged. “Or maybe it was all a lie and the Human Sire has nothing to do with it. The word of a creature unknown to us is worth nothing.”

“It sounded like it knew we’d be coming through here,” Nasq insisted. “How is that possible?”

“The driver?” Nida offered. “He’s odd.”

“Maybe,” I said. If the driver indeed was giving away their location, that implied either Dralos or someone in the Alistar duchy was beholden to the voice’s owner. I highly doubted it was Dralos considering the draconian’s limited free will. At the same time, something told me it wasn’t the driver. A gut feeling, and I always trusted my gut. I turned back to the woman and looked at her closely, frowning all the while. Though she looked aged, wrinkles beginning to claw themselves to prominence across her visage, a more thorough inspection showed she was much younger than at first glance. Despite the wrinkles, there was a youth to the skin and the features that the wrinkles couldn’t hide. She was actually quite young for a vessel. Part of me felt a pull to investigate, to look into how a young woman became a vessel of a Sire, or whatever it was.

But the larger part of me simply didn’t care. This wasn’t my problem. Vessels were the product of weak-willed individuals who craved pleasure above all else, and who fell deep into the pits of self-gratification and addiction.

I reached forward with my free hand as if to stroke her cheek under slowly refocusing eyes. The woman tried to open her mouth and say something but I didn’t give her the chance. With a quick jerk of my wrists, I snapped her neck before unceremoniously dropping the pathetic corpse to the ground with a sickly thud.

Vessels were a sickness, best cut down like invasive weeds.

I left the corpse on the floor to the screams of the waitress, who scrambled out of the building as if chased by a demon and I retook my spot at the table. No use in letting good food go to waste.

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No one joined me while I enjoyed a few more pieces of bread and meat. Nida and Nasq eventually sat back down, both looking a bit confused. Brianna, who had never stood in the first place, continued to look shell-shocked.

I frowned as I slathered some jam over a slice of warm toast. I would need to harden Brianna if she was going to become the head of my personal information network. She couldn’t freeze every time I removed an obstacle or took out trash. I needed her to be solid in her convictions and quick to act. Perhaps would release Victor to her when we reached the carriage. People like her reacted better when it was to protect.

Suddenly, a series of rhythmic ripples radiated outward from the center of a nearby cup of water not even half a second after I’d taken a bite of my toast. I raised an eyebrow at the disturbance, reaching out with my senses to spot outside movement. I leaped back to my feet, dropping the bread and rushing out of the inn, my paragons and Brianna hot on my heels. We didn’t stop to look at the incoming disaster as we tore out of the town and back toward the carriage, only to find the entirety of the small village surrounded by a thick blanket of tangible fog.

“W-what’s happening?” Brianna asked, hands trembling. She crossed them in front of her chest, likely to steady the shaking.

“The gift of monsters,” I said simply, attempting to break my way through the wall of fog. It refused to budge no matter how much heart energy I poured into the attempt. “I am getting quite sick of these progenitors not minding their own business,” I grumbled and curled my hand into a fist, smashing it into the unmoving fog. A cascade of booming echoes ricocheted around the village and the fog visibly quaked from the pressure, though it did not crack even a little.

“What do we do?” Nasq asked. “Fight?”

Nida twirled her spear. “I like the sound of that.”

“You do?” Brianna shivered. “I very much do not like the sound of it.” As if in response, the ground rumbled, and the roars of hundreds—maybe thousands—of monsters filled the air. The wave was approaching fast.

I scanned the village, searching for a plan. Even with my power, being overwhelmed was a real danger if I became overwhelmed by pure numbers.

I took a deep breath, glancing at my two paragons and Brianna. It was quickly dawning on me that progenitors had very clearly enjoyed free reign over this world for far too long if they could so easily set up a monster horde. At least in Ordite, there had been those of us strong enough to fight back. While I did not know what the progenitor of today was scheming, it seemed I would need to conduct a very thorough cleansing of the Alistar Duchy. Vessels were a plague. If there was one, there would be many others nearby.

With the amount of time and agency the progenitors were enjoying, there was a very real possibility that Brightstone wasn’t just a town housing a vessel or two, but a conclave of them.

“Start with the monster wave,” I said, heading back toward the Townsquare. “If my guess is correct, the townfolk will be of little to no help with the battle.”

My three companions didn’t answer. Nida readied her spear, taking a position a half dozen feet behind me to cover my back. Nasq stayed by my side, his eyes jumping in every direction while wisps of magic danced around him.

For the next five seconds, Brightstone was smothered by a sheet of utter silence as even the roaring and thumping of the monster wave ceased.

Then all hell broke loose as the wall of fog shattered, giving way to a rampaging horned monster that charged through the fogged wall until he collided with a nearby shop. The structure collapsed under the force of his run, and the creature released a primal roar that was immediately echoed by hundreds of similar beasts who joined in his rampage.

“Holy Goddess’ tits,” Nida swore. “Is that a Harrowing Brute? Are those all Harrowing Brutes?”

“No,” Nasq replied with a loud gulp. “There are Da’Rokons and a bunch of others too.”

The Harrowing Brute, as Nida referred to the horned creatures, were things of nightmares. Even the smallest of them stood well over eight feet tall. Grotesque bulges of muscle mass protruded like warts from its oily, leather skin that stretched taut over sinewy black muscle. Its head was elongated, vaguely human in shape, but where the eyes should have been there were only sunken, hollow sockets seeping with a dark black ooze that dripped down their faces like tears.

Instead of a mouth, there was a single vertical slit running from the middle of its face down to its chin. It spread open with roaring and snarling as it charged on all fours, showing a series of lined, uneven, and jagged teeth that jutted out in all directions. When it spotted us, the gash opened wide, nearly swallowing its entire head, and released a high-pitched screech that sent shivers through even me.

It bent down and pointed its massive, spiral horns at us. The horns were covered with flesh, blood, and the core of whatever creature had last stood in its way. In stark contrast to the black of their skin and muscles, each horn vibrated with a sickly green glow that pulsed with a type of energy that caused my stomach to churn.

Both of its two arms were unnaturally long and pounded into the ground, readying the torso for an obvious attack. At the end of each arm were clawed hands that were otherwise skeletal, free of any muscle that I could see. Each claw was sharp enough to split a man in two.

Its legs were bent backward like those of a predatory animal, no doubt giving it the ability to run at unimaginably high speeds despite its hulking frame. As it dipped down and began its charge, a row of jagged ridges running down its spine came into view and I nearly gagged at the sight of small, malformed heads and faces pushing up against the flesh of its back as though trapped within, silently screaming and begging each time they surfaced, only to be sucked back into the creature’s depths.

The closer the Harrowing Brutes were, the stronger the oppressive force around us became until even Nida was forced to take a knee under the pressure. Visions of death and pain assaulted my mind, blurring the battlefield with an ever-encroaching weight. It felt as if the creature was aiming not for me, but for my very soul. Although the pressure would not have cowed Nida if there’d been only a few, the pressure of the horde was overwhelming her. Nasq was barely out of a pushup position with the effort, and Brianna was already out cold.

I sighed and cracked my neck, releasing a soft pop. “Enough,” I commanded, words cloaked in heart energy causing my voice to expel outward like a volcanic eruption.

My Authority blasted out from me in every direction like a tremendous tidal wave. The previous pressure pressing down on us vanished in an instant, the battle turning on its head as the Harrowing Brutes slowed, some even collapsing to the power of my Will and Authority.

But even I could not deal with the entire wave by merely exuding energy.

Heart energy thrummed through me with excitement, my core screaming with the possibility of growth and progress as I stalked over to the nearest struggling Harrowing Brute and ripped one of its horns straight from its skull, releasing a spray of black ichor from the gaping wound. The beast screamed before me, but I drove the twisted horn into the back of its neck.

The screams became a whimper before dying out entirely.

“Alright,” I said, voice still charged with heart energy. “Let’s see if you animals are enough to help me achieve my second ring.”