Chapter 036: The Siege

It took me a second that understood that it was Syna’s rifle shooting.

A blood splatter suddenly showed up on the wall maybe one meter from Simea. Split second later a headless body collapsed on the ground.

Shit, an ambush!

I covered myself in Inhuman Resilience. Best defensive hex I had for a situation when I had no damn clue where the enemy was. I cast it right in time. A second later an arrow hit my chest, repelled by magic but drawing some power out of it.

If it was poisoned, all they needed was a single hit connecting.

I fired Havoc Bolt roughly at the direction from where the arrow came. I set it to explode and spread shrapnels as far as possible. Judging from the red cloud and the partial human body (ending around the shoulders) I hit the archer.

Was someone else there?

A quiet NOK sound announced that Syna found another target. She had a technique that used aura to supress sound of her rifle firing. Whiz of arcane bullet cutting through air remained.

Target was on the other side of the channel, but far away, maybe twenty meters from Simea. He was also strong enough for his Aura Armour to stop the bullet. It didn’t matter. We could see him and he got hit by Destroyer Lance, Dragon Fireball and another silenced Arcane Bullet at the same time.

The coffin will have to be closed during this one’s funeral.

Suddenly three more arrows came close, all of them deflected by our defensive magic. Shit, how many more are there…

I fired another Havoc Bolt roughly at the direction the projectiles came from, but this time I missed. Fuck. Then another arrows came.

Sure, each arrow was rather weak, but they weakened our defensive magic. And each archer probably had two or three dozens arrows in their quivers, all of them coated in poison. One comes through and we are toast.

Suddenly a warrior with a small shield and axe, wearing rags and a gasmask, showed up on our side of the channel. He charged at Leria that served as our vanguard and…

… well, this wasn’t a good idea. Attacking Chosen Ones generally was a horrible idea. He tried an exaggerated overhead axe swing only for it to meet her shield. Then she simply stabbed his chest with a sword.

One less to worry about. They are obviously amateurs, they keep dying too fast for me to use Appraisal on them.

A rain of arrows intensified. More and more of them. Trying to retort with more Destroyer Lances and Havoc Bolts seemed pretty wasteful. I began firing Holy Bolts are random.

Another warriors showed up near Simea, trying to stab her with a sword. She jumped back. Only for yet another enemy to show up right behind her, with his sword…

Nevermind, Syna got him first. She must have been targeting the first one, but seeing the threat to Simea she shifted her attention. An Arcane Bolt (this time not silenced) hit his side, not overwhelming his Aura Armour but having enough strength to push him towards the wall.

He failed to stab Simea. She knew someone was behind her from the sound of a body hitting the wall, so she leaped forward at the first enemy. He managed to block her dagger with his shield, but a second later a Dragon Fireball hit him. Flames disoriented him enough for the dagger to find a way to his throat.

I finished the other warrior with Destroyer Bolt.

I returned to firing Holy Bolts at random and… a miracle happened. One connected. An archer jumped back, his Aura Armour holding just barely.

He failed to reinforce it before an Arcane Bullet exploded his head into gore mess.

These guys were weak. Like, totally. Amateurs. Cannonfodder. Someone teached them basics of aura and used as expendable pawns. I mean, nobody with a tiniest bit of working brains could expect them to survive against… like… anything. They would probably die on their own after breathing without masks. The air here probably smelled foul.

Syna managed to uncover another person under Suppress Presence. An archer. Another exploded head. Arcane Bullets seemed useful.

Unfortunately, Syna didn’t have access to proper bullets to her gun. One of biggest downside of rifles was that ammunition was costly as hell. And really hard to get unless you were a member of organizations like 101st Infantry Division. It was really a state-of-the-art rifle. But this was something that was taken into account long ago.

Arcane Bullet was an Arcane Magic spell that allowed Syna to conjure a fake bullet out of magic. Initial velocity sucked when compared to ‘proper’ bullets, so the damage and accuracy was worse. But hey, it was an unlimited ammo at least until you ran out of mana!

Last archer seemed to try to escape. Bad move. He ran too fast and it collapsed the Suppress Presence. He might have survived the Arcane Bullet that hit his back, but not the Destroyer Bolt.

More gore. Is that everyone?

Simea jumped over to our side. Being alone only made her more vulnerable in case something worse happened.

“That was seriously underwhelming.” She said after landing. “What was that supposed to be?”

I shrugged. ”Don’t ask me. I’m disgusted as well.“ For real, don’t go attack adventurers until you at least have basic combat skills. Leria, check that one clown over there. Maybe we find out who were they.” I pointed towards the warrior Lena pierced so professionally.

We were still on alert. Though it was no longer Defcon One. Leria quickly checked out the fallen warrior before finding a small amulet. She showed it to me.

It was simple iron plate with a symbol on it. Red chalice. Reversed.

Curious. I seemed to have saw it somewhere, but I couldn’t pinpoint where. In WR, obviously, but where exactly… no idea. Too many memories, too many things faintly remembered. As long as I only heard or read about it rather than facing it, there was next to no way for me to remember details like that.

“I think I saw it somewhere, but… “ I shook my head. “Let’s continue to the village.” If it still stands, that is.

***

It still stood, but the heads on the palisade all had gasmasks on them. And the large reversed chalice painted with red paint on it left no doubts.

So, the Erstval village has fallen to those idiots. There were two options. They either had tougher people around, or they moved in after locals went into coma. The first village would have easily repel them when not impaired by the disease. And I refuse to believe that khardics could be less combat competent than inrithians.

“We aren’t going to siege this village, right?” Vaera decided to comment the situation in a way awfully typical to him.” I think I left my battering ram in the Hold. “

Imagine my surprise when I discovered that Vaera actually likes pulling witty comments out of his ass. Uh. The longer he is with us the more open he becomes. And this hurts.

“No. We are going to capture it different way. And besides, rams are used to storm the fortresses, not siege them.” Learn the difference, peasant. “Simea, Syna, I have a mission for you.”

***

Everything went exactly as planned or even better. So good that I could barely believe it myself. Wasn’t it like the first time nothing went horribly wrong when I made a plan?!

We waited for a few minutes before announcing our presence by me and Vaera unleashing our strongest offensive magic at the palisade. Or, to be exact, the guys on top of it. As Havoc Bolt exploded and scattered its killing shrapnels around, at least two of them died instantly. Dragon Fireball set another aflame.

Gate in the palisade opened as enemies charged at us while screaming incoherently.

All of them “Pentagram Cultists”. Unfortunately, the name was mostly a temporary one. It was obviously meant to be replaced when we discovered the true nature of the cult. A thing typical for Adventures. It was possible that it wasn’t even directly serving the Pentagram, but instead some other, lesser power aligned with the damnable quartet.

The game system identified them as mobs rather than NPC. I immediately lost all doubts about killing them. Only a single thing in DFI games changed NPC status into mobs. Pentagram corruption.

First of four basic ways it influenced people was called Depravity. It was a slippery slope on its finest. It was a perversion of mind that slowly warped you into a omnicidal maniac dedicated to spreading the madness of Pentagram. Depravity perverted your common sense into its bizarre and terrifying parody. It could be easily stopped by pretty much every decently trained priest in every temple in the world, but only until you gave in to the voice in your head for the first time. As long as you resisted, you could be saved. When you decided to gave yourself to the Pentagram even in the smallest thing…

Supposedly most depraved Pentagram-worshippers couldn’t wait to die to change into eternally screaming human batteries that powered Pentagram with their misery and pain. That’s how far they diverged from normalcy.

Those that made the decisive step and were beyond saving were shown by the World’s Requiem as mobs. I believed it was similar here.

Whatever they truly were, they were all around Iron I-III. But there were tons of them. They must have made the village into their base of operations, but seeing our low numbers they decided to respond with immediate counterattack. Which was tactically sound, but not in this particular case.

After the gate in the palisade burst open, Leria charged forward, empowered by my Rend Evil hex. Lena remained close to me and Vaera, in case someone managed to get through. She used some of her power to call Toothy and ordered him to follow Leria.

Then I unleashed one of my newly learned hexes. It actually required a short incantation in thaumaturgic language, as all ‘proper’ summonings.

Lesser Fiend

Category: Eldritch/Destroyer

Type: Daemon/Servile

Threat Grade: Iron VIII

A severely weakened, immature version of Fiends, a heavy infantry of Destroyer. Almost two meters of fury and hatred, with nothing but simple minded desire to annihilate, destroy, dominate and murder filling its head.

Known spells and hexes:

Terrifying Roar

Devastating Blow

Steel Hurricane

Fury

Two meters high, with dark red skin covered only by very basic loincloth, mouth filled with razorsharp teeth… oh, and it had four pairs of arms, each armed with crudely looking axe. It immediately used Terrifying Roar (actually stopping few cultists in their tracks, despite their zealous fervor born from brainwashing) before it leaped at them. Suddenly changing into human version of chaff-cutter.

It was almost idiotically costly. Even at my full manapool I could keep the Lesser Fiend in Reality for five minutes at best. Now, after several Destroyer Lances and Havoc Bolts I suspected that four minutes would be too much. But it increased the assault strength of our vanguard at the very opening of our battle.

On one side Leria with Rend Evil and Holy Smite, my Fiend and Toothy. On other, maybe thirty or fourty degenerated cultists worshipping some undescribable beings from outside of Reality. It was obviously a one-sided slaughter. Of absolutely epic proportions.

The cultists could have achieved some successes if they used some FUCKING tactics, but no. Too crazy for that. Common weakness of depraved cults. They simply keep storming us. Having their archers shoot at us from the top of the palisade was the apex of their tactical thinking.

Fiend has fallen after maybe a minute of relentless slaughter. Mostly because all Fiends were so simple minded that defending themselves never came to their minds. Small cuts and poison build-up from arrows (it looked like a hedgehog by the end) finally made it lost too much power and return to the Dark. Toothy and Leria continued the massacred.

Fiend’s banishment freed my manapool and I joined Vaera’s bombardment of enemy archers.

Despite their obvious insanity, enemy seemed to have some sort of command structure. Or at least someone to call the other idiots to retreat when the casualties began growing too much. At least twenty cultists died by the time they started withdrawing.

And then my trap finally closed.

Syna and Simea used Suppress Presence before the fight started. With the cultists obviously focused on us, they easily sneaked by them and entered the village. Then they were supposed to identify potential enemy commanders and sabotage the gate, making sure that enemies won’t manage to close it before we enter.

Then they were to wait until we thin their overall numbers. If enemy starts retreating, assassinate their commanders and then stay alive. If he goes all out, simply walk through the gate and attack enemy main force from the rear.

It wasn’t hard to hear the gunshot. Assassinating enemy commander(s) was going to reveal their presence either way, they could as well do it loud enough to make sure we heard that as well.

“Go.” I said to Lena. She nodded and charged the enemy. Now was the time for final push.

I also fired a Havoc Bolt above Leria and Toothy’s heads, having it scatter above the cultists trying to flee through the gates, taking advantage of them crowding near them.

I love Destruction Magic. Sure, it’s absolute gorefest far behind things I were normally cool with, but… it was insanely devastating. And there was not a slightest hunch of sex. It simply ripped enemies into pieces. A pleasant change, really.

“Wow. It’s almost too easy.” Vaera suddenly commented. “So, how’s your first captured village, general?”

Well… fuck. Too easy. He is right. Something is wrong.

Normally I could understand that some weakass cult took over a village or something, but this? A part of Adventure? In an area that even normally was at least slightly more dangerous than average? Where a city militia unit suffered some casualties?

***

After the fighting ceased we entered the village.

It didn’t look much different than the first one. I guess it’s hard to achieve some level of variety when you live in sewers. They couldn’t even use any sort of khardism symbolism since it would be equal to begging to be burn at stake by witch-hunters.

I told Simea to search through the body of the commander to see if there was anything interesting. She knew which one it was, since she was the one to stab him. I could also see that Syna and Leria were anxious to go search the village so I had them do that.

Simea quite quickly found a map of the sewers. It was slightly tainted with blood of the fellow who carried it, so it took me a while to decipher it properly.

Interesting. It seems to show the way to the central command of this cult. It is to the northeast of here… now that I think about it, weren’t the bloodsplatters surrounding the dead militiaman suggesting he came from northeast?

It’s possible that there is a regular battle going on around there. With witch-hunters and militia fighting to extinguish the cult. We seemed to be on the very edge of the territory under its control. No wonder there are only the weak idiots like those around, it definitely doesn’t look like a strategically important position. All strong cultists are probably busy so they sent cannonfodder material only.

Weird. Why give such a detailed map of the entire cult forces to some faraway commander? This doesn’t look like good idea. It just begs for it to fall into the hands of some random adventurers. Like, for example, us. I get that they might not be too smart, but…

Now that I think about it, it’s a big cult, right? And they tend to have rather smart people at their top echelons, despite the cannonfodder being mostly brainless. All of this doesn’t make sense.

“So what, we are going northeast?” Simea looked at the map over my shoulder for a while and obviously got the same informations from it as me.

“No way.” I shook my head. “Nobody is paying us to fight the cult. We are here to find Kovacs group. We are going northeast only if they went northeast as well.”

“Wait, aren’t they serving Pentagram? I thought that killing them makes the world a better place.” She said, eyeing me with curiosity.

“Yes, it does. But making Ambryxis forces suffer grievous losses while killing Pentagram cultists makes the world a place twice better.” I answered. “Besides, for some reason nobody on the surface knows a thing. If the witch-hunters are trying to cover it up, we could end up getting executed right after the battle, even if we saved their asses.” They probably were trying to avoid subverting popular belief in Ambryxis the deity power by people discovering that there was a large Pentagram cult on the loose. In the city. Right beneath their cellars.

“... And it would be hard to explain why we are alive despite getting murdered. Right.” She nodded. “So where is the device pointing to?

“Deeper into the village. Actually, let’s follow it right now. It’s not like there is a point in searching the rest of corpses. Even if they somehow possessed something interesting, it was probably tainted by Pentagram. I was going to burn the map the second it stopped being useful. Just in case. “I’m also curious what our resident khardics found.”

***

We ran into them maybe two minutes later.

“Nice. You are here. Where is the device pointing to?” Leria went straight to business.

“There.” I pointed towards the door in the stone wall of the sewers close to us. “You found something interesting?”

“Yes.” Uh oh, I don’t like her tone. “The quarters. Several large rooms and halls. They must have tried to quarantine the infected there.” Seemed logical. The other village was doing the same. “This fucking cultists picked better looking ones and seemed to be using them to…” Her voice collapsed into a growl. Filled with quite obvious hatred.

…

…

So I guess that the disease wasn’t venereal or the cult knew how to cure it. And the cultists truly were depraved by Pentagram’s Corruption. This sounded perfectly like something a Depraved person would do.

I guess that we made the world a better place.

“Wonderful.” I said, my voice filled with disgust. “One more reason to purge that bastards from the face of the world. Now, the door.” Leria nodded.

She tried to open the door, but it didn’t work. They were locked.

By cultists or…?

Great. “Simea, try to pick them.” Searching through murdered cultists for the key would be painful. Many of them were literally ripped into pieces.

She tried to put the lockpick in the lock. But it was repelled.

“Get back. It’s magically protected.” I said to her. I could feel it now. Sense Magic turned out to be useful in the weirdest moments.

I came closer and spent a while analyzing it. Hmph. Definitely not a work of the cult. Cults rarely could use magicks unrelated to Pentagram. But my evil sense was obviously silent, with exception of slight feeling of general evil coming from the background.

Hmm. If not a work of the cult, then it has to be the work of the villagers. Sure, it was very possible that they had one or two sorcerers, but… we were yet to find a local chapel. Since locals worshipped the Overtyrant…

Well, it won’t hurt to try, right?

“Leria, order the door to be unlocked.”

“What?” I could see that she was gawking at me even through the mask.

“Tell them to open.” Seriously, it’s not that hard. Just do it.

“O...okay? Open.” She said that towards the door. Maybe without enthusiasm, but it should be enough. I grabbed the handle.

The door opened up.

“Wait, what just happened?” Leria obviously required some explanations.

“They were locked by Overtyrant’s magic.” I answered. “It’s theurgy. A divine magic. Theurgies always submit to the will of the Chosen Ones of the god who is their origin. Otherwise a Chosen One could be killed or bound by magic of his own god and that would be pretty stupid.” I made a step back and pointed towards the now opened entrance. “Ladies first.”

***

As expected, it was a chapel. Some villagers seemed to found refuge there. I believed that they were those who managed to hold against the disease the longest, being still conscious when the cultists came. They barricaded themselves with some weak theurgic enchantment that the cult in its general idiocy and incompetence failed to take out.

Then they simply succumbed to the plague. Everyone inside was unconscious. A person I presumed to be a priestess lied before the altar. She was an elder human, mayber 50 or 60 years old.

Kovacs group obviously entered the place. Locals were probably conscious then. So they met with the priestess and got some informations from her. Cultists came after they left.

Was there some knowledge left to be found?

After brief search we discovered a part journal part parish book. The disease started ten days ago. Kovacs group was here two days ago. Hmph. They were already considered missing at that point, probably too busy with the newly found mission to report back. This also means we were slowly catching up to them.

Ah. That thing is important. It seems that Kovacs group came back once. In a rather supernatural way.

It seems that the chapel is a respawn point. And that there was something strong enough before us to partywipe Kovacs group. Huh. As an additional information it seems that for some reason the small crystal linked to the localization device failed to respawn with them, forcing them to return to the point where they died to reclaim it.

Arbitral rule of an Adventure. The thing could adapt to random elements like that item. The game was already preparing the alternative in case of Kovacs failure - meaning us, a group of adventurers supposed to follow Kovacs trail through the sewers. Forcing us to go there and back when they died would be a pain.

Made me wonder if the crystal would respawn with the group if they went random way and died there.

Oh. A map. It seemed to be painted in hurry. Probably to be shown to Kovacs group. It showed the tunnels between the village and some location to the northwest. I quickly confronted this map with the one we got from cultists.

Weird. They do not match. Sure, tunnels were as they should be, but the target location (whatever it was) was missing.

Oh fuck. Puzzles fell into right place. Showing me a rather intrinsic image.

I laughed loudly.

“What is it now?” Vaera was the first one to speak. “It’s obviously one of your sudden moments of revelations that you are going to share with us, right?” He sighed. Well, suit yourself, ghrrr.

“That cult is a bunch of disgusting maniacs, but their commander is a good one. Ruthless fellow, but a good tactician. That just made fool out of Ambryxis.” Right, right, I know, explanations. “The group we slaughtered was meant to be slaughtered. Their map was a fake. There are probably more of them in the sewers, purposefully handed out to units meant to be wiped out. Right now militia and witch-hunters are most likely busy fighting a gruelling war of attrition to take down a completely fake center of cult operations. The real place where the disease started is there.” I pointed to the place marked on the priestess map. “And that’s where Kovacs group went.”