Chapter Four
Unraveling a Cultist Plot
A wave of emotion smacked Arnold across his chubby cheeks. He saw visions of grandeur, but also terrible poverty. There was starvation, resentment, and even...
"Ahhhh." Arnold waved away the magick from his fingertips. He stroked his beard thoughtfully.
"Wh-what did you say?" Grace asked, her visor raised. Lord Myron could have been asleep for all the emotion on his face.
To Grace and the cultist, no more than a couple of seconds could have passed. To Arnold, however, a small lifetime had run through his thoughts. That was the biggest problem with [Memory Manipulation]. People had too many memories to manipulate!
"He isn't a lord, lass," Arnold said. "Just some pauper from the streets. Made a deal with a [Greater Demon]. Tinkered with all your memories."
"Wh-what...?" Grace looked down at Arnold in complete stupefaction. "What are you talking about?"
The decorative room filled with a slow clap. Both Arnold and Grace turned to Lord Myron as the horse-faced man offered them sardonic applause.
"Remarkable," the cultist said without intonation. "Did you steal the Master's gift when your band slew Them? I must admit, I feel a little naked in front of another user of [Memory Manipulation]."
"Lord Myron...?" Grace took a weak step towards the cultist.
"He's the ringleader," Arnold continued. He snorted, coughed, and pointed a meaty finger at the cultist. "Murdered Daring Dyan himself. To think I missed brunch to meet this lout..."
"Dale!" Lord Myron called, and a pair of footsteps entered the decorative room behind them.
The mousy butler from before wore a mousy grin. Grace turned from Lord Myron to Dale with a slack jaw. Her face was rich with confusion and full of hurt.
"I told you it would have been best to kill the daughter, as well," Dale said in a mousy squeak.
The butler's black jacket turned to ash. His white undershirt chipped away in bits and pieces as if it were molted scales.
"Dale...? What... What are you saying?" Grace's eyes were two wide marbles of confusion.
The mousy butler slowly transformed into the blue-skinned demon Arnold had seen in the cultist's memories. It was a [Greater Demon] and clearly a user of [Memory Manipulation].
"While it was truly a pleasure to meet the Last Hero," Lord Myron began, "I believe you are about to forget... everything that just happened."
Arnold snorted and drew a line across his arm with the edge of his fingernails. A red droplet of blood fell onto the floor, though nobody in the room seemed to notice. At least none of the humans.
Arnold marched over to where the blue-skinned demon stood suddenly petrified. He jabbed the creature in the chest with his bloody thumb.
"Listen here, you bloated blueberry," Arnold growled. "I want you to erase all this... Devourer of Dreams nonsense from everyone's memories. Turn them all into proper men and women!"
The demon's red eyes bulged like pinecones as he hurriedly nodded his horned head.
"Y-your will is mine t-to obey, Glorious Master," the [Greater Demon] said with trembling lips.
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"And after that I need you to kill yourself somewhere I won't be bothered by it," Arnold said. This cretin was, ultimately, the reason why he was missing brunch. "Go! Start with that mob outside!"
The blue-skinned demon bowed so low that his head almost touched the floor. He disappeared the next moment in a puff of acrid smoke.
"All this work without even a crumb of cake..." Arnold muttered. He turned back to Grace and the cultist. A little emotion had flittered onto Lord Myron's face.
"You..." The cultist pointed a trembling finger at Arnold. "What...? How...?"
"I drank a little bit of Del's blood after I defeated him," Arnold said with a snort. "That's High Demon Lord Del! Mixed with my own blood. Demons aren't too bright. They get a whiff of it and think I'm a [Demon Lord] myself."
"What have you done?!" Lord Myron took a stumbling step towards Arnold. "How dare you stand in the way of the Master's revival?!"
The cultist revealed a jeweled stiletto from within his sleeves. He lunged forward and drove the blade towards Arnold's face. The stiletto might have trimmed a little off Arnold's beard, but Grace crashed into the cultist like an angry bull. The two humans fell onto the floor whereupon Grace started to smash her mailed fists into the cultist's face.
"Revival this, revival that," Arnold muttered as the sounds of violence echoed throughout the room. "Can't revive what's not dead."
Nobody noticed as he beckoned a shadowy black kitten out from his shadow. Ra-Hemi's three glowing eyes stared up at Arnold as Grace continued to pummel the life out of the fake Lord Myron.
"All this trouble over a lout like you," Arnold said as he knelt down and scratched Ra-Hemi, the Devourer of Dreams. The black kitten purred directly into his thoughts.
The problem with The Old Ones was that they could not be killed. They lacked physical bodies and even souls. Ra-Hemi had been defeated at least three times in the history of the world before Arnold and his band had set off to do it a fourth time. It had therefore made more sense for Arnold to simply invite a weakened Ra-Hemi into his body, to fuse them to his gnomish soul. He was not sure why nobody had thought of the idea sooner. When Arnold died, Ra-Hemi would cease to exist.
A pronounced cruuunch filled the room. Grace rose unsteadily from the bloody pulp of Lord Myron's face. Globs of red wet slid off her fists, and her sweaty face looked half-crazed.
Arnold found it difficult to meet the woman's red stare. He pulled on his beard nervously as silence commanded the room.
"He... was the... ringleader...?" Grace asked through great gulpfuls of air.
"Y-yes, he was," Arnold said with an emphatic nod. "And that blueberry fellow... He'll clean up the rest of the mess. Small kingdom, Lorendale. Shouldn't take more than a month."
A laugh escaped Grace's blood-speckled lips.
"Everything resolved... within moments..." Daring Dyan's daughter said with a ruby smile. "Mother always said... you were a monster..."
"Monstrously hungry perhaps," Arnold said as he continued to tug on his beard. "And I wouldn't say everything is resolved, eh? There is... one small problem."
"Small problem...?" Grace tilted her head wearily.
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"GODS BE GOOD, THE KING IS DEAD?!"
It had not been that difficult for Arnold to gain entry into the High Keep. The real trouble had been all the stairs. While Arnold had defeated demons and dragons and all sorts of monstrous foes, Grace had to carry him half the way up. The royal abode deserved to be razed to the ground for that humiliation alone!
They had found the Lorendale King on the highest floor of the High Keep. He had seen better days.
"This is awful!"
Grace was a hysterical mess as she paced back and forth in front of the King's enormous bed. Every few seconds she would loose a new outburst into the otherwise empty room.
The King was very much dead, and he had been dead for a very long time. They had found his dusty skeleton still tucked into bed with the Royal Lorendale signet ring hanging loosely around his skeletal fingers.
"Is this really such a... a big problem?" Arnold asked. His stomach rumbled with want. He was not sure he had ever waited this long for brunch before. He could not even remember why he was waiting!
Grace turned on Arnold as if he was a cultist.
"The King is dead!" The female knight jabbed a bloody finger at Arnold's chest.
"Kings die," Arnold said, swatting away the woman's hand. "That's what they have Princes for."
"He doesn't have a Prince!" Grace said, grabbing her helmeted head in despair. "He doesn't even have a Princess!"
"Then a brother!" Arnold said grumpily.
"His brother...?" Grace whined pitifully to herself. "Lorendale is doomed if that man becomes King! He's more likely to sell the crown than wear it! How could this have happened...?"
Arnold felt as if he had done more than enough to earn some brunch. At the same time, he felt as if he was forgetting something important. He knew this was Daring Dyan's daughter, but why was he helping her?
He was not about to quit this little quest halfway, though. Arnold Grubbly always finished what he started, especially when a meal was involved. It was just a shame the King was dead...
"I'll make a copy of him," Arnold said suddenly.
"A copy?!" Grace looked over at him with horror in her eyes. "A copy of what?!"
"Of him!" Arnold stabbed a meaty finger at the skeleton lying enviously on the comfy bed.