Chapter 2A: There’s No More Powerful Tool Than Mysterious Fear
A special class monster attacked one of the frontier towns, it killed dozens of knights and adventurers no civilians were injured. It sprinted across the land causing death and destruction wherever it went. But it wasn’t just blindly attacking everything in sight, it had a goal. That is to reach the royal capital. This was the report that Isaac was given, a headache inducing report that made his stomach uneasy. He puts down the document and opens the second drawer to his right and pulls out a small potion in the shape of an hourglass, he takes off the top and downs it immediately. His mind was already stressed with the idea of the demons attacking several frontier villages and destroying them, taking the people in those villages prisoners off into the barrier protected Demon Continent. The Demon King’s Blessing, the Barrier of Solalis. A barrier that allowed entry and exit of demons but never humans. It was erected after the demon king died two years ago and now the demons who were quiet for all this time had started to act.
“And now we have a strong disaster class demon on our hands heading towards the capital. At the worst possible time….”
The heroes who defeated the Demon King were off on an important quest outside of the country, he had made the announcement of this problem to them but the best they could do was arrive in six days. Six days was a lot of time. It would have done everything that it wanted within that time, Isaac’s condition was getting bad but not bad enough for him to be bed ridden, there was no such time for that. The door burst open as one of the knights ran through it with a crazed face, he had to keep his composure and quickly assess the situation.
“Sir!”
“Yes?Out with it there is no time for introductions.”
“We have lost contact with the Knights of the Church and Silver Gale. “
“What?”
“They had succeeded to track down the demon as you had predicted but then last night when they were supposed to have confronted it we lost all contact with them. No messages. No magic transmission. Everything.”
“…………Where was the last location that they were last sending messages?”
“This location”
The knight gives the documents to Isaac who rips them off from his hand and pauses as he looks at where the location they were headed too was. He knows of it very well, how could he forget? He stares at the knight with a serious gaze with him shivering nonstop.
“Prepare the mages who know the teleportation spell, give off these specific coordinates and let them be ready to send us back and forth.”
Isaac got up from his chair with a confused face, this was the hero’s village. The village he destroyed when he was given the order by the king, the location of the demon was last spotted there. What was it doing there?Why did it go there?No one knew of where the Hero was born except the kingdom, were the demons able to extract memories from the corpse of the Hero the kingdom abandoned for its prosperity?So many questions were now riddling his mind, could be what they wanted to retrieve was not the head of the king but the negativity that was released at the time of its destruction using that for some sort of sinister evil magic. He just didn’t know, he had to find out regardless. Isaac grabbed his coat and began to give out the message to assemble a small unit of people who would protect him and investigate the matter.
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The particles of the magic circle disappearing was swept by the wind Isaac and his men arrive at the ruins of the Hero’s village. A short distance away from the village itself, they begin to walk in the forest that encompasses the village and past the weed infested untended fields. Upon entering the gate of the village all of them recoil in revulsion as the scenery they find there is not one with skeletons and burnt buildings but one filled with the corpses of both animal and man.
“By the Gods…..what has happened here”
One of the knights with Isaac utters as the faces of these corpses were riddled with despair and suffering. Bisected bodies, bodies without limbs, bodies whose eyes, tongues and fingers were cut off, bodies which were burnt and many other things. The demon that did this was enjoying it, it tortured them thoroughly despite their strength.
“After taking the negativity that was in the village it ended up using the despair and suffering of the holy knights and adventurers as a pastime. My god this is horrendous”
“My Lord what shall we do?”
“Are you able to get an image from the moments of what they last saw?That way we might identify this demon with one of the ones we know”
“Certainly sir”
The magic was called Death Imagery, it could allow the caster to see the final moments of a person’s life before they died. The demons had a more advanced version of this spell as it could tell the entire life story of the person who died, they often used it to gain secrets from the dead soldiers and generals. One had to come up with certain countermeasures for this spell otherwise the nation’s secrets and military tactics would be compromised. Isaac stood whilst folding his arms at the edge of the village as he began to think distant thoughts, he looked at one of the fallen swords of the warriors and sees his own reflection inside of it. Two years back everyone used to say he looked way younger than his actual age which was in the forties, his blonde hair was still very much bright and his blue eyes still held a confidence to them but now he looked like he was sixty and his grey colored hair was quickly thinning out as well as his blue eyes turning into a muddy colors. These two years were not exactly healthy for a man like him, he should have been somewhere in the countryside relaxing with his family not getting busy to calm the public down after the Hero’s death and making sure the demons’ insurgence was kept to a hush except to the frontier villages and cities. This demon had blown the cover that he had tried so hard to keep a secret and now the nation was going to be thrown into a panic that the demons were going to invade their nation in revenge for the Demon King. He still stares at the image of himself in the sword and suddenly that changes to the face of a young man he knows very well smiling evilly at him with joyful red eyes.
“?!”
He strangely shifts himself away from the sword in a panicked state that several knights notice this.
“Is something wrong Lord Salvatore?”
“N-No it must be the lingering curse that the demon left behind, I saw a hallucination not much to worry about. Did you find anything worth noting?”
“We are still in the process of doing that”
A sense of unease rode the general’s heart as they said this. What was that?He thought he rid of everything that reminded him of the Hero, a mere tool that was supposed to be thrown away. Isaac’s heart is still shaken up by the whole thing, that increases even more by the screaming of the knights who were casting the Death Imagery spell.
“What happened?!”
“I do not know Lord Salvatore!”
“THE DARKNESS!!THE DARKNESS IS TOO MUCH!!”
“STAY AWAY!!PLEASE I PROMISE I WILL NOT LOOK ANY FURTHER!!!”
“FATHER AND LORD ZEUMAXIS HAVE MERCY I DO NOT DESERVE TO BE IN HELL!!PLEASE I DO NOT WANT TO BE HERE!!!”
“GYAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAH!!”
“Restrain them !Quickly before they swallow their tongues!”
Isaac orders the other knights to restrain the knights who were tasked to use the Death Imagery spell, putting cloths in their mouths for them not to do the unthinkable. The eyes of these knights were muddied and filled with utter despair as if what they had seen was from the realm of Hell itself, but even that was unable to make them unable to protect their lives. As if in one mind they all wordlessly chanted a spell that make ice picks at close range to their eyes instantly killing them and making them slump over dead, added to the corpses of they were just examining.
“By the gods what is the meaning of this…..”
“It certainly is a high ranking demon, it caused them to see a hell that only they could see in their nightmares. The demons are well versed at creating counter measures to our low tiered Death Imagery but I have heard of none who killed themselves in the sight of it. Some went mad and that was the end of it. We return to our domain right now, we need to make preparations of whatever is coming our way, I need to inform the king about this.”
Something was directing its malice at them and they didn’t know what that was. How could they?