Little things to take care of on the way...
“I was found innocent! Innocent!”
Errant’s fist crashed against the man’s jaw, and he slammed to the ground. Deftly, he removed the golden Ring and its Warding magic on the man’s left hand, and as the man whimpered and looked up, he met Errant’s silver eyes.
“Ah.” The one word made the handsome young man’s heart plummet. “Lust rides on you like a fat horse. Pride spews from you like sewage. And on your hands...” The man swallowed as the silver eyes dropped. “Three? No, four murders.”
“You-you can’t kill me! I was found innocent!” he protested, slurring around his aching jaw.
“The Temple was totally aware of your hush money and threats to those who would testify against you, and mysterious accidents happening to several others. Do you think the servants of Justice are stupid?” Grace began to hum with golden light, and the man tried to scramble back, to find Errant moving right with him without taking a step.
“Rapist graduating to murder. Psychopath and entitled ass thinking he can do anything because his family has power and influence. You are a rabid dog, Praethus Comwell, and rabid dogs get put down.”
The young man started to scream, but the Wrath of Heaven cut him short. Vivic fire combined with the Wrath, and his flesh burned away in a flash of Land-feeding. His bones would take a few more minutes.
Errant let the Sound Bubble fade away, looking around the bastard’s room. After a little thought, flames came up around Grace, and he set the bed alight quickly.
The family knew about all of this, and deserved to be punished, too. They probably had magic to control fire, but that wasn’t going to be very useful when he ignited the entire back side of their manor...
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The wagon was overturned, heaved over by brute force. The smell of many chemicals of dubious origin and make filled the air, while the horses fled a safe distance away.
The big man who served as driver and bodyguard lay on the ground, life’s blood pumping out his neck toward the staring head a few feet away. Errant’s foot, five times heavier than normal, kept Nomin Quale securely pinned.
“Six people dead, nine scarred, with twenty-nine dependents among them.” Errant held up a bottle, and plunged a long needle into it. “You do an excellent job changing your name and how you harvest for the Lord of Bones. You serve the Second Horseman, eh? Disease and poison, such a cute devotee. And because you don’t use magic, well, hard to track, isn’t it?
“Still, do you know what happens to alchemically-energized daemonic ichor when suffused with the Wrath of Heaven?” The vial in his hand glowed suddenly, the inky black stuff within igniting with holy light, and he slowly backstopped it.
“It becomes a Ravage. You know, like holy water for sins.” He held up the syringe, designed to be used on horses, and a drop of silver-gold liquid fell from it. “Totally harmless to most folk, of course. But if you’ve been accumulating that fat tally of sin for your masters, well...”
“No, no!” the tonsured man in apothecary robes tried to stutter, and the syringe was stabbed into his neck, and slowly released into his carotid artery.
His skin began to light up in the patterns of his blood vessels, his eyes shimmered with celestial designs. His lips glowed, the beads of sweat on his forehead were like crystals, the blood dribbling from his mouth began to burn.
His head began to smoke, his teeth cracked, his tongue blazed. He screamed as the sins he had accumulated on his aura became fuel for the Ravage tearing at his mind and body.
Spontaneous combustion and melting bones followed about thirty seconds later, after a virtual infinity of pain. The speed of it was a direct indicator of just how much evil this bastard had done. The Harsites believed him guilty of the deaths of hundreds of innocents...
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“I understand family love. I really do,” Errant said, frogmarching the sweating man forwards. “But, you know, there’s solutions for this stuff that don’t involve just killing the afflicted. And somehow, you managed to choose the absolute worst of them.”
“I-I just wanted to help him! He can’t control himself-”
“And the Curse could have been lifted from him with one trip to a temple of Sylune, which could have been arranged by force if he refused. Instead, you locked him away in containment, except when he escaped and killed at least sixteen people, all to save your damn family name!”
Errant threw back the bar, hauled the iron door open, and, totally ignoring the many scratch marks and dents on it, threw the man inside.
Cries and shouts sounded from within, and the man looked up in horror at his father, mother, sister... and his older brother, who was manacled not very securely to the back wall, staring at them all in horror.
“Don’t worry. I’ll kill him in the morning,” Errant said, glancing at the rising moon. The older Ristwick brother was already starting to get a bit hairy. “I left you knives, but, you know, you really should have carried silver, no?”
The door slammed shut, the bar came down, and the screams started from within.
The howls started in about ten minutes. They built for about half an hour, and then iron protested and the screams grew shriller.
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They were replaced by the sound of ripping meat and crushing bone, ending with remarkable speed. After all, like all his other victims, they weren’t carrying silver.
The abuse on the door started after about an hour of feasting, but his Ward had overlaid it, and it would hold; the werewolf inside had no chance of getting through it.
In the morning, he’d feel the pain he’d inflicted on so many others... and lose himself to the beast entirely, most likely. Instead of getting help and removing the Curse, he’d chosen to hide it and prey on people, all just to save face.
And then... his skull would serve as a compass to the werewolf that had infected him, or the party that had Cursed him to begin with, and Errant could get to the true root of the problem...
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“Don’t bother. They are all dead.”
The young man with the sword in hand looked around in a panic. The attack had been too sudden, too brutal. Flashes of light, a sword sweeping out, here, there, coming from all sides and reaping them one after another.
“Colin Flinster, right?” The young man in leather and mail gawked at the silver-eyed fiend who had spoken in between whistling for the horses that had scattered when their riders were summarily blasted or cut from their saddles.
“I-I...” Too stunned and frightened, the young man stared at the freak who had just slaughtered sixty men, like trying to fight an angel from Heaven...
“Your mother thought you’d fallen in with some bad men. She was right. Rundel’s Company here are paid raiders and pillagers, whose favorite targets are small thorps and isolated farmsteads, always in the pay of this master or another.”
Errant pointed at a horse nearby, pawing at the ground next to the headless corpse of its rider. “Take that horse and go home. The Church of Aru needs some temple guards, you might apply for a position. Now, off with you.”
Colin swallowed deeply, looking around at all the dead, all of whom were starting to burn with white mist. “Th-thank you?” he managed to stammer, sidling towards the horse.
The helmed man with the glowing silver eyes waved him off without turning around as he continued gathering up the horses. It was a small thing to expand speaking in Tongues to Speaking to Animals as well, and while dumb, animals saw a lot, and were very informative at times...
Colin Flinster hastily mounted the fine stallion that Captain Rundel had ridden. He looked at the headless corpse of the mercenary captain for a short moment, before hurriedly urging the horse into motion. He didn’t want that killer changing his mind...
Errant glanced over, knowing the company’s pay was probably in those saddlebags, and Colin was going to have at least some kind of a windfall there. Rundel’s magic Sword was still slung on the side, too...
Shrugging, he let the young man go. His mother was a devout Amanan, and really wanted to save her boy from a bad fate. He had wanted to go out and see the world, and the world had bit him hard...
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“I get that you thought others were prey.”
There was a crack as bone broke, golden light flared, and a slavering muzzle bent unnaturally.
“I get that you are far more than any normal person could think of fighting.”
A claw ripped out, was caught in a merciless grip of iron, and a hammerstrike shattered the bone in a flash of electrum. A kick pounded into a ribcage, and a howl of pain was cut off by the shattering of the breastbone.
“But you know, what goes around, comes around.”
A fist way too heavy for its size crashed down upon the werewolf lord’s skull, smashing him into the ground.
“Your pack’s gone.” Crunch. “You won’t be infecting others.” Crunch. “You won’t be killing others.” Crunch. “You’re Cursed meat, and you’re going to feed the Land.” Crunch, crunch. “Rejoice! We all become meat and dust in the end.”
Krak, crunch, splotch...
The oversized brute didn’t have a face anymore.
Errant stood up, took out Purity, and blew a load of Wrath the length of the broken corpse, instantly sending it up in eager vivus.
Mismatched spiked shoulders, horn on the nose... one of the nine primary Aberrant Curselines. Uligloctal’s? The Feeder in the Woods was making a move here? How wonderful...
The warhorses had been swapped to a local baron who had recently suffered some major losses from raiders, the extra arms and armor a welcome boon to the man. Errant had kept the magic and coin, of course, or rather, Burned much of it quickly away. Gear was a bottomless pit for goldweight...
He brought out the skull of the Ristwick brother, which remained dim and cold. This Curseline was gone, so this werelord’s progenitor was also dead, likely at the hands of its descendants, if tradition held true.
A pack of trueborn weres was no small thing, dangerous and sly hunters who preyed on all aspects of the forest. Driven by the Curse, they’d pack-hunt at least one sapient during every full moon.
The blood on their hands likely formed a small river. If they spread their Curse instead... multiple rivers.
They’d keep what spoils they had in the lord’s lair, so they’d be easy to find. Grabbing the jewelry (non-silver, of course) off the burning corpse, he stepped into the light between the trees, and Crossed the Light away to clean up this pack properly.
It was just a shame that he couldn’t follow the Curse downline to other infected weres, only upwards...
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Lightning cracked and rumbled, flashing down to the spire atop the manor home, which was glowing with the power to attract the might of the storm.
Conducted down into the laboratory below, arcane machinery lit up, tubes of copper, silver wire, and golden couplings all crackling and arcing with power, flowing down into the thing on the slab in the center of the room.
It had been stitched together from at least a dozen bodies... bodies that must have been attained fresh, since nobody with a brain buried their dead for fear of necromancers and just this kind of situation. Most likely they had been designated as viable specimens and killed...
The withered man controlling the machines cackled madly, his eyes alight with the knowledge that he was finally creating new life. He was defying the heavens, bringing into existence a new being, a servant that could help him in his endeavors, and silence all those critics who –
“Awk!”
He looked at the point of the Sword coming out through his chest, glowing golden, and jerked as the Wrath jolted through every inch of his body. His sparse hair ignited like a candle, forming an odd flame of gold-eating-indigo as he slowly slumped to the ground, his dreams dying as his eyes burned away.
Another lightning bolt came down, and the entire lab seemed to explode with arcs of electricity. They all poured down the multiple bars into the stitched-corpse on the table, and were especially concentrated around the head.
Errant was neither blinded nor deafened, but could only sweep his Wrath through the connecting conduits one after another, swearing to himself.
The next bolt descended, and finding no place to vent, blew apart the top of that corner tower, taking much of the roof with it, and leaving the rain to come in and send sparking, sizzling steam everywhere throughout the laboratory.
Errant sighed fatalistically. He looked at the figure on the table, hoping... but such was not to be.
It sat up abruptly, from a motionless patchwork-corpse to sudden activity, strength beyond death surging through it. The flesh golem turned mismatched eyes on him with the acuity of a trapped spirit, and uttered a low moan of hate and recognition.
He had killed its master, and if it truly wanted to be free, then it had to kill him, too!
“Yeah, yeah, yeah.” Wrath was useless against a golem, but that’s why he had a Sword... and a certain Scarab, clever planner that he was...