An icy chill cascaded down Ben’s back. Eyes wide and grip tight on the haft of his obsidian halberd, he stared at the entity who wore his Keeper’s form. He felt the violent, rhythmic beat of his heart in his throat, and he gulped in vain to dispel the uneasiness that scuttled up his spine to rest heavily upon his shoulders. Ben strained to meet her gaze —or blindfold— yet the blood-colored robes, rippling and undulating, caused his head to ache. It felt as if his subconscious mind was trying to make sense of the swirling, bloody patterns in the otherworldly material of the garment.
“Fucking parasite,” Ainsle groaned, yet the tattooed woman didn’t react at all.
Ben didn’t dare to glance at his mentor, as he feared he might lose sight of the entity. He couldn’t feel its presence, even when it had attacked the pair only moments prior.
“Ainsle, you all right?” he said, eyes unblinkingly trained on the enemy.
“Yeah. Cunt got in a lucky shot, is all,” she said with a hint of a growl betraying her frustration. The Berserker came into view as she circled, spearhead low and stance wide until she stood behind the woman.
Ben raised a brow, to which Ainsle deliberately shook her head. He decided that he’d trust her judgment and hold off on engaging the entity. “Who are you, and what have you done to my Keeper?” he asked.
The tattooed woman in Ann’s form tilted her head, yet the movement seemed… wrong. It felt as if he was witnessing a puppeteer exaggerate mannerisms for the sake of the audience; the motion was exaggerated. He shivered as it spoke in a monotonous drawl.
“The child is but a vessel.” Ben’s vision began to swim as she continued. “She too will be absolved, for the Lord is merciful to his Champions.”
A familiar pressure began to permeate his mind. His headache flared and threatened to overwhelm him, and Ben recalled his initial confrontations with his Avatar —he had fought to maintain dominion over himself.
This thing dares to test me?
Despite being taken aback by his immediate reaction, Ben gave into the quiet anger that roiled within him. He began to realize it was futile to keep fighting against his nature as the Champion of Domination. The entity had harmed his Keeper —his friend, companion, and subject.
“You didn’t answer my question,” he said evenly. “And I don’t take kindly to someone trying to get into my head. Consider this your last warning.”
Ainsle cackled, and he felt the beast’s growl rattle his robust frame. The allure of potential conflict made him shiver in yearning, and the lust to exert his will on the being began to displace the feeling of unease and caution.
The uncanny puppet of Ann jerked its head to tilt in the opposite direction too quickly to be human.
“Wrong. Wrong. Wrong. Wrong-” It droned as its form began to contort. Knees bending the wrong way. Elbows pivoting unnaturally.
“WRONG! WRONG!” It screamed over and over again as the bloody robes sank into the sand as if it were water. Blood dyed the pure white desert sand, expanding in ripples at a blistering speed. The figure no longer resembled his Keeper but a floating, undulating mass of flesh, bones, and tufts of blonde hair that bubbled and snapped before Ben and Ainsle.
“The vessel FAILED! The FILTHY BITCH!” it screamed in a legion of voices that echoed across the bloodied dunes. “YOU!” A spindly hand sprouted from the sickening amalgamation of skin and blood and pointed a finger with too many joints at the War Dancer. “You defiled her! My PRECIOUS VESSEL!”
“Yeah. That’s enough,” Ben said as he nodded to his mentor.
He stepped forward and swung his halberd in a rising diagonal arc, and its arm fell to the sand with a dull thud. The creature let out a deafening wail as Ben watched a blood-covered spearhead sprout from the center of mass.
“Bloody hells, that was harder than I thought it’d be,” Ainsle shouted from behind the entity, her voice piercing the terrible cries of the creature. “The cunt is getting stronger!”
She stepped back with light feet, and instinctually, Ben did the same. “What do you mean?” he called back.
“Can’t you feel it? Shit! It's using the Martyr’s power! It’s gonna bring this whole place down!”
Ben glanced at his Avatar, who stood almost protectively over the prone red giant, roughly fifteen paces away. He thought it odd that the massive obsidian feline hadn’t intervened, yet the recollection of his traversal to Ainsle’s domain caused something to click in his mind. The memory of his feet not disturbing the sand on the beach in the domain of Vengeance told him that he couldn’t interact with the domain directly —which extended to his Avatar, as domains were essentially part of the entities themselves.
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“Oi!” Ainsle hollered, tearing him from his musing. “No fucking daydreaming!”
Suddenly, the roiling mass of bloody flesh froze, deathly still, and after two heartbeats, fell to the sand with a squelch and a hiss. A crimson claw pierced through bloodied meat, and a red form blurred, expelled from the heap of flesh toward the sky. At the apex of its trajectory, Ben saw an androgynous, slender figure with long, spindly arms and legs ending in elongated talons that whispered the promise of violence.
It landed softly between the two Champions of Illephrre, and a smooth, featureless face, devoid of eyes, mouth, or nose, regarded the diminutive Berserker for a sliver of a heartbeat. It blurred. Ainsle rolled to her side, yet her grunt of pain told Ben that the bloodied creature had struck true. Ben saw three deep furrows on the abdomen of the short woman; their willpower saw to it that they didn’t bleed, yet the injury would remain.
Ben charged at the creature, who stood eerily still, a few paces from the platinum-haired Berserker. He felt a cool clarity cleanse his chaotic thoughts. His mind was stilled as he trusted in his training to guide his thrust. The creature parried the strike with a force that betrayed its slight frame, sending the crescent blade of the halberd in a low arc toward the sand. It lunged at Ben’s face with horrifyingly long claws, and the War Dancer smiled. He fell gracefully to a low stance, narrowly avoiding the attack, and redirected the momentum of the parried weapon to spin and deliver a counter sweep at its legs. The creature jerked and leapt high to avoid the strike.
The Berserker Cackled once more and sprang into the air after the monster. “FUCKING AMATEUR!” she taunted as her pure white spear pierced the crimson creature’s neck. It made to grab the woman, yet she had already kicked off its torso and sailed through the air in a graceful backward arc like an acrobat dismounting between tumbles. Ainsle landed softly on the ball of one foot, her opposing knee raised with toes pointed to the sand —she flourished her delicate spear and rested its head on an outstretched arm.
The entity, however, landed with a thud in a heap of spindly limbs, scuttling to stand. Ben didn’t allow the window to close as he launched himself low to the ground before twisting his hips to deliver a low slice at the creature’s center of mass. The horror tried to parry the attack, yet the slice was a feint. Ben withdrew the spearhead of his halberd and used the momentum of the strike to whip the butt of the weapon to impact its skull with a ringing thud. Its smooth, crimson face impacted the ground before it tried to scurry away to safety, yet the Berserker was ready to cut off its escape as she landed on the monster’s back, spear impaling its torso.
Ben raised his obsidian halberd and dropped the crescent blade with all the strength he could muster. A leg was severed, and then another. He dismembered the creature while the young, nude Berserker bellowed intoxicating laughter atop its back. The War Dancer’s cheeks ached from the seemingly permanent grin he had plastered to his face. Ainsle twirled around the shaft of her embedded spear as if she were a dancer, and Ben’s smile grew wider as he approached the head of the tall creature.
Without warning, the entity dispersed in wisps of ashen smoke, interrupting the short woman’s fun. Ben dropped into a defensive stance, as had Ainsle. The pair stood with their backs facing each other, eyes scanning the surrounding dunes. After what felt like a few minutes, the Berserker sighed.
“The bugger isn’t gonna show itself again. I had a feeling it was a bloody Priestess.” She shrugged and cast her gaze to the dune where the Martyr was shackled. Ainsle gestured for the pair to walk.
“You think that thing was a Priestess of Illephrre?” Ben asked as they trudged up the crimson dune.
“Well, yeah. Who the fuck else could it be? You see, the thing is, Benny boy,” she paused to glance at the pair of Avatars following shortly behind. “There aren’t many Temples of that bloody God for a reason. So, yeah. This kinda thing doesn’t help much when the rich folk spout shit about them being fanatics and so on.”
“I don’t get it,” Ben said after a beat of silence.
“Dull as a butter knife,” the short woman sighed. “You know about the Speakers, right?” Ben nodded. “Well, I’m thinking they left something… or someone in Sunshine’s head. You know, to keep the girl from jumping off a bloody cliff for some random bastard.”
Ben frowned before the light of understanding bloomed in his mind. “Oh… You said you met other Champions of Sacrifice before Ann. Were they followers of Illephrre?”
Ainsle grinned. “There you go! No, they weren’t. One of ‘em was a Martial Artist, and the other a bloody farm boy!” she chuckled.
“So, you think they are trying to control her to keep the Avatar in their religion?”
“Bet your smooth balls I do!”
Ben frowned at the oddly specific turn of phrase and glanced down.
Ah, okay.
She continued as if the reference to his exposed parts was the most normal thing in the world. “Nobody can tell where a new Champion is gonna show up, let alone what ideal the poor bugger will end up embodying. So, all of this-” She gestured with an open palm to their surroundings, halfway up the dune. “-fits nicely into their ‘prophecy.’”
“You don’t think the prophecies are true?” Ben asked as he had been mulling the thought over in his head during the quiet moments.
“Pah. I’m too old to believe in that shit,” The young form said in a deceptively sweet voice before pausing. “But I’d be shitting you if I wasn’t considering the possibility, seeing as everything has just so happened to line up oh-so-bloody-perfectly during these past couple of months.”
The pair remained silent for most of their trek up the dune to the Martyr. Ben considered his mentor’s words, and one question kept circling to the forefront of his mind. He had hoped that the confrontation with the entity would scour the Speaker’s influence from Ann’s mind, yet he slowly lost confidence in the notion.
“Hey,” he said, and the woman hummed a questioning reply. “If there’s some kind of telepathic link involved, I suppose the only way to get the Speaker’s influence out of her mind is to go to the temple, right?”
Ainsle frowned at the mention of telepathy yet shrugged and answered regardless. “Fucked if I know. But there’s only one way to find out...” she trailed off before stopping to meet his gaze, grin absent. “Even if it ain’t so, my big boy over there-” she gestured with a thumb to the Avatar of Vengeance. “-won’t let me drop this one. Ol’ Ain is gonna have to suck it up and make the trek to the snowy mountains again…” she groaned and grimaced. “My poor, bloody bones..”