Tera had been teleporting for a long time. Her gift had truly skyrocketed her placement within her tribe, allowing her and her family to be lavishly taken care of as long as she did certain tasks for the chief.

The old chief had been cruel, but he had been good to her. That was how it worked within the tribe; if someone was useful their gift would be cultivated and they would be taken care of, otherwise they were deemed as useless chaff and were chained.

After the old chief had been removed from position by the new chief, she had wondered what her life would be like. The new chief was a bit stupid at times, but no one could argue with his results.

The new chief had been quite surprised when she described to him that there were more people in the world than just their little tribes in the frozen wastes. Tera had spent much of her time teleporting between the Frozen continent and the Hearted continent to get lavish products for the old chief. But the new chief wanted none of that, he just wanted to experience the world he didn’t even know existed.

So, she sent him to the Hearted continent and let him explore to his heart’s content.

The discovery of the other continent had been a mistake on her part. Back when she was just a young up and comer in the tribe experimenting with her gift, she had tossed one of her marking stones into the ocean. Her gift allowed her to create teleportation waypoints; it was an intricate rune that took an incredible amount of time and skill to reproduce to the level her gift required. She had wanted to have some sort of weapon with her gift, since the tribe had been a much more dangerous place back then and she thought if she could teleport someone to the bottom of the ocean that she would have a trump card when trouble came knocking.

Unfortunately, her waypoints only worked if there were no obstructions in the way of her teleportation location. So, the whole experiment ended up being a bust. Until a few years later when a new waypoint appeared in her soul space. She skeptically teleported to another continent, a continent not covered in ice and snow but filled with warmth and beauty unlike any she had ever seen before. She cried, then promptly told the old chief about it.

Instead of immediately moving everyone to a new continent and starting life in a fresh environment, he had chained her. Then forced her to start doing runs for him, improving his lavish lifestyle even further than it had been before. She hated her chains, but no one knew how to remove them. The old chief had taken that secret with him into his early retirement.

Tera thought the old chief hadn’t liked the idea of putting himself under someone else’s thumb. Out here, he had essentially been a king and ruler, and the old chief would rather rule a small pond than be a small fish in an ocean.

The new chief wasn’t so small minded though. He knew that living here in the frozen wastes was not ideal, so after they finished this final task, he was going to move everyone to the warm lands; or that was what he had told Tera.

One of the old crones who could read the future in the clouds had told the new chief that he could free everyone from all their bonds if he found an artifact.

Thus, the search had begun. Tera had teleported as much of their manpower into the tunnels and had them start searching. There were no effective treasure seekers in the past few generations, so the going had been slow.

Then, the invaders arrived. The tribe had known that someone was on the continent as Jan had sent a message about a group who were searching for a guide within their small tribe.

But once a whole entourage had arrived near their digging site, they had known that the invaders were there searching for the same thing.

Tera had been tasked with trying to sneak up on them then teleporting a small army of the sins onto them. Best case scenario, no one would have gotten hurt and then the invaders would have pulled out, letting the tribe finish their search.

Unfortunately, some dickhead collapsed the tunnel that had her waypoint in it, rendering the whole plan to be useless. Tera was personally miffed that she lost one of her waypoints, but she had started working on a secondary option immediately after the failure.

The tribe knew how tough it was living on the unforgiving cold continent. Many members had starved to death or died by exposure to the freezing winds. So, Tera had theorized that if they disrupted their supply chains and whatever was providing them with their rations the invaders would have to pull out and leave.

After some time searching, she had finally found their compound. It was an incredible excess; they had built an entire castle that was somehow heated. There was no snow on the ground inside the perimeter. It brought a terrible anger up in her, seeing someone living so lavishly without even thinking of sharing. It reminded her of the old chief and his chains.

The new chief had made many sins when he took up the position of new chief. His gift was quite scary, it took away a person’s sins and made a monster that existed physically as a representation of them. The actual process was a little horrifying to watch, but everyone who had their sins removed always seemed so happy afterwards. Maybe a tad ‘simple’ in some cases, but unbothered.

After this raid against the castle, they might be a little low on the sins, but nothing that the new chief couldn’t fix with a few flashes of his gift. There were plenty of people in the world who wanted to be free from themselves.

The sins had helped revitalize the structure of the tribes. The old chief’s system involving food allowances depending on someone’s usefulness was no longer needed. Since the sins could root around for food all day, or help with the necessities, all without any pesky hunger. They had especially helped with the excavation, as well as with the little invasions.

Stolen novel; please report.

The new chief was unwilling to let any of his subjects truly come into danger against this group of invaders. So, they had amassed an army of sins to attack. It had been Tera’s job to teleport them into the thick of it. It was rather limiting to only be able to teleport a few at a time, but slow and steady won the race. The army of black shapes with eldritch features would bring terror to anyone facing them.

Tera readied her army. They could follow simple commands from anyone that the chief allowed, so she readied their lines and prepared a charge. She wasn’t foolish enough to think that this would be easy, but most of the manpower was over by the buried city, so Tera was hoping it would go swimmingly.

A wall of black started to grow as it crossed the virgin snow of the area. Crunching snow beneath every limb, they approached the castle.

Two things struck Tera as she approached. There were a lot of animal carcasses in the snow that hadn’t been there when she was preparing for this battle. They were beautifully cut up, but it was mountains of meat and sinew sitting in the snow, staining it red. The other was two people standing near the top of the castle. Tera could make out the figures well, but one was a woman carrying a ladle while the other had androgynous features and brown skin that was so very different from the pale coloration of the people of the tribe. In their hand seemed to be some sort of wooden flute.

Tera felt an overbearing warning deep in her gut, and she tightly gripped the two extra waypoints that she had created for this mission. It was an extravagance, but she felt she needed it.

Tera watched as the stain of black slowly collided with the stain of red in the white snow.

As Tera watched, the figure on top of the castle raised the flute to their lips. A clear tone cut across the fields of snow, and the world seemed to ripple. All the meat and corpses seemed to shimmer and shake for a moment before they started writhing. Out of the dead came snakes, some were little colorful things, others were larger than houses, but an army of snakes rose out of the stain of red.

The note ended, but the song continued. A mournful melody that spoke of pain and misery guided the snakes and they moved in unison with the music; creating waves of pain and misery that crashed into the sins.

Venom dripped from their fangs, and the coiled and struck in a beautiful dance of death. They lived to kill the sins, and to be killed by the sins. Some were ripped to pieces by tentacles and arms of varying shapes and sizes, others were cut by arms made of blades, while others were bitten into and feasted upon. The black army of abominations was slowly colored red as snakes died and killed among the masses.

Throughout the death, a flute played. These snakes had been born from the music and died to the music. But as their corpses lay upon the battlefield, ripped asunder, they seemed to ripple. A new snake would appear out of the old snake, completing the cycle of rebirth and resurrection.

It was an endless tide of snakes.

Tera had never seen something more horrifying in her life. It was genuinely terrifying, and she was unable to fathom the power held by the person playing the flute on the high tower. But Tera had a mission to accomplish, and she refused to give up after so many resources had been put into it.

She gritted her teeth and launched one of her waypoints as high as she could. Once it reached the top of its arc, she teleported to it and threw the next one. With this one she was able to barely reach the high tower that the two indistinct figures had been standing on.

After she teleported to the high tower, Tera left one of her waypoints there and teleported back to the stone that she had thrown initially. She needed both for her plan.

Tera knew that she was not a fantastic fighter. Her hands and feet could never move in the proper ways to truly make her a danger. It was truly a pity she thought, since she had such a unique gift that allowed for some incredible movement in a fighting situation. But she had an army to throw at the two people on top of that tower to compensate for her own lack of skill.

Tera started moving the sins in pairs up to the top of the tower. She was quite surprised at how long it took for the two figures to notice the sins approaching them. By then she had already gotten six sins onto the roof and charging at the pair.

Victory was in the bag. The snakes were obviously a tough thing to keep up since the flute player just kept playing even as the sins charged, but the other took a ladle and scooped up some loose snow that was on the top of the tower.

Tera thought it was all quite futile. She was sad at the meaningless loss of life, but she had already lost far too many resources in this raid than she had hoped. The tribe would be hindered for months if not years from her failure to prepare properly.

The ladle spun and something appeared in front of Tera that hissed in the air. To her surprise it was not a snake, it was a glob of boiling oil flying directly at her. Her mind screamed danger, and she instantly teleported away. In her fright she had teleported away from the battle entirely and had appeared back in her safe room back in the village center.

She looked at the intricate tapestries that decorated her small room and took a deep breath. It was just a bit unexpected was all, how could she be ready for boiling oil to get thrown at her like that?

With a pop she reappeared on the rooftop, ready to continue with the unfortunate slaughter of these two powerful warriors. But instead of attacking or bringing more reinforcements to her small group of sins, she watched in horror at the massacre occurring.

The woman with the ladle had somehow covered two of the sins in boiling oil, leaving them writhing in pain, screaming out in their incoherent voices. The next two were gone, but a distinct buttery scent was in the air, and many of the tiles near one of the edges were looking soft and slick. The final two were being ripped limb from limb.

Every time the horrifying woman touched a sin, a wave of white seemed to eat across the being. The touched flesh seemed fluffier and sweeter than before. But gruesomely she would rip that hunk of effected flesh off.

The sins were destroyed, and the woman picked up her ladle. She scooped up a hunk of the white fluffy substance in the ladle and tasted it. A positively delightful smile spread across her lips as she murmured something about, “marshmallows.”

Tera felt a tear roll down her face. She knew the sins were unfeeling, but that had been beyond cruelty. She knew she was outmatched; this mere pair had stopped her dead in her tracks.

So, she teleported away from them and back to the waves of sins on the ground, taking the waypoint with her. She couldn’t fight the two of them, but she could move the combatants around and through the mass of snakes.

Then the tentacles hit. The sins who had been circling the perimeter, trying to bypass the snakes were squished beneath a massive tentacle. A monster that was larger than Tera could easily imagine was hiding beneath the depths of the water, but its large tentacles were taking swaths out of the battlefield.

It made a terrible situation into a hopeless one. So, Tera called for a retreat.

The few remaining sins ambled away, and the snakes let them. They were not pursued once they had disengaged, but Tera could feel the eyes peer down at her. Those eyes held no respect nor fear, only amusement at this feeble attempt. Tera resented them and their power, so she would make them pay.

The next time she had to face an enemy, there wouldn’t even be a battle. She was going to pay them back tenfold for this loss.