Still locked in the cold, dark cellar and relentlessly pestered by the hag’s whispers and visions, Teal sat down and fumbled his pockets to find a piece of whetstone he carried on him. Even though it really didn’t do much good anymore, he picked up the more beaten one of his remaining two swords and began sharpening it. Caring for his equipment was just what the inquisitor did to keep his mind occupied when waiting.

The blade itself was barely usable and far beyond what a quick honing could even begin to hope fixing. It would have required a skilled blacksmith with proper tools to salvage it, but he had to work with what he had on hand.

Typically, the swords and rest of his gear were repaired by a desert elf named Ala-fiur, who had gained a compulsory citizenship of Mournvalley and a free trip there in a large sack, when Teal had witnessed his skills on one of his missions and by chance noticed that he had no immediate family that would miss him too much.

Though it may have seemed like Teal went though a frightening number of weapons when fighting, it was nothing compared to what he did before acquiring the somewhat unwilling assistance of the elf. Swords made by the few necromancer blacksmiths were not even halfway as sturdy and it wasn’t all too uncommon for them to snap on the second swing of their unnaturally short life. The swords themselves weren’t all too bad for being made by people who had mostly forged basic fittings and candelabras before, and would have fared fine in normal use, but the absurdly high stresses Teal’s necromancy made them suffer through was simply too much. In comparison, the swords made by desert elves were already sturdier on the account of all the thick-skinned desert beasties they had to ward off with them, and it didn’t take much to convert the design to be suitable for the inquisitor.

Teal smirked while thinking about the new ideas he had for the elf once he returned from Ou, he could tell the blacksmith about Anastacia’s spears as well and see what the elf thought about them. Deep in his thoughts about weaponry, he almost forgot the pickle he was in.

He had tried to break out of the cellar by force but had been denied exit through some magical means by the hag. Slowly, vision by vision, his surroundings had faded away and he could no longer feel the meat or the corpses stored with him nor find the ladder out.

“Are you even listening to me?” The hag asked and made whatever vision of a bad memory from Teal’s head disappear suddenly.

“No.” Chuckled the inquisitor.

“There is something so very wrong about the necromancers of this age.” The hag sighed, almost like Teal wasn’t supposed to hear it.

“So, you’ve spoken to Anastacia then?” Teal asked with just a speck of compassion in his voice. “Did she drag you down to her level?”

“What?! No, no, absolutely not. This is all going exactly as I wanted. I have successfully fooled her, easily even!” Boasted the ancient spirit.

The inquisitor saw right through the spirit’s lies this time. “No, no you didn’t. You probably just tried to throw some generic promise of world domination at her and she told you to shove it.” He guessed. “It’s a really unfortunate situation you’ve chosen to awaken yourself into, if I’m being honest. I can’t speak for Lady Helia, but Anastacia has no pride, greed or any other vice to appeal to; if she did, she’d be working for us, or we’d be dead. As for myself, I may not have as much faith in my queen anymore as some of us, but I believe in her vision of our place in the world – at least in the part she told me, and in no way does killing anyone here serve my purposes. This is not something you or anyone else can twist into something else. I am fully content in sheathing my swords for the time being and playing the part given to me. So release me from your spell, you foul spirit, and try your luck with someone else in a couple of thousand years. Because this most certainly isn’t your time.”

“Silence, mortal! Know your place!” The had screamed and scorched the brand on the necromancer’s arm.

A while passed in the dark nothingness as the inquisitor gritted his teeth and fought through the burning pain. Knowing it would bother his tormentor, he kept sharpening his sword despite the mind-numbing agony he was in and didn’t so much as grunt in discomfort. Every second felt like an hour and Teal could have sworn the torture lasted for days on end, but buckling was not an option in his mind – not if he would have to live and suffer through Anastacia mocking him for it.

Finally, the pain faded away and the taste of blood in the inquisitor’s mouth began to pass. As he opened his eyes, he could see the faint glimmer of light trickling in from the gaps between the floorboards and the hatch holding him prisoner.

“Very well, inquisitor, the spine might be crooked, but it grows strong!” The hag laughed harder than ever before continuing with an overly sarcastic tone. “Clearly, your ideals are pure as snow and your vision incorruptible. So since you have defeated me, let us part with a gift! Your swords lie dull and shattered, so to mend this, I shall sharpen your words instead! Be careful, lest you poke someone’s eye out with them”

With an uncontrollable mocking howl, the spirit faded away and left the necromancer to peace.

Teal picked up the bottles he had come to get in the first place and climbed up from the cellar. His eyes had already gotten more than used to the dark and even the relatively dim lighting by a few lanterns appeared bright as day, but the second he glanced at a window, the sunlight reflecting from the snow almost blinded him.

A bit wary about talking, as the hag had no doubt given him some troublesome curse, the inquisitor cleared his throat and whispered. “Test, test, one two three…” He repeated the test a few times until he was speaking with his usual volume and even then, what he was saying appeared to have no noticeable effect on anything. Relieved, he chuckled and took a quick swig from one of the bottles of cider. “Sharpened words, I guess she’s nothing more than-“ As the words left his mouth, he could suddenly feel a sharp cut in his right forearm.

Teal rolled up his sleeve and found a freshly cut wound near his elbow. Not deep enough to cause any actual harm, but definitely painful enough to be distracting and would need some care to make sure it didn’t get infected.

“What the fuck?” The inquisitor blurted out without thinking and covered his mouth when he realized it.

Yet nothing appeared to happen this time.

Pressing on his wound to staunch the light bleeding from it, Teal sighed and started to repeat his words. “Sharpened?” Nothing happened. “Words?” Still nothing. “I?” As soon as he mentioned himself, another painful cut appeared right below his left knee.

Still confused over the details of his newfound curse, the inquisitor assumed that he was no longer allowed to refer to himself out loud, which seemed like a rather pointless curse that could easily be worked around for the time being.

“Whatever, need to find water to clean-“ He was about to say when a small barrel on one of the counters suddenly exploded with enough force to spread the water it contained all over the kitchen, making Teal’s heart skip a beat as he instinctively grabbed his sword.

As the water that was now flowing freely across the floor reached his boots, the inquisitor began to worry about the true nature of his ailment, as it may not have been limited to just himself after all. First thing that caught his eye happened to be the sack of slightly poisoned coffee beans he and Anastacia had inspected earlier.

After taking cover outside of the kitchen, he took a deep breath and whispered. “Coffee.” Causing a moderately sized explosion to spread fragments of green coffee beans all over the already messy kitchen. “Damnit.” He muttered and peeked back in.

After testing his theory with a few more items, Teal concluded that he was no longer allowed to refer directly to anything, or it would damage or outright destroy the thing in question.

Next step, however, was quite obvious to him. “The hag of the north.” He stated as clearly as he could on the off chance that the curse could be used against its caster.

“A valiant effort!” The spirit laughed. “And not entirely pointless one either! My gift is fully capable of hurting me as well – as long as you can utter my real name. Who knows, maybe everyone who knew it did not die centuries ago?” It cackled even louder. “Luckily, you have two ways out of this without having to find out my name! Either defeat the beast allotted to you, or simply kill either Anastacia or Helia – I do not even care which one. I guess you could spend the rest of your miserable life not being able to name anything too, but I feel a sharp drop in your inquisitorial career if you were to choose that.”

Teal scratched his head. “What about writing?” He asked, carefully choosing his words.

“What do you think?” The hag responded with a question that made the answer clear.

The conversation was interrupted by an incredible force colliding against the lodge, shifting the entire building and shaking the heavy lumber in its walls with ease. Pots, pans and utensils crashed down from the kitchen cabinets and the sound of shattering glass echoed from upstairs along with some distant screams from the top floor, likely from the servants who had no idea what was happening.

It didn’t take Teal much to figure out that the direction the blast wave and the thunder strike-like crack that briefly preceded it and the direction the fearsome torrent of necromantic power that was Anastacia appeared to be in didn’t coincide by happenstance.

The ancient spirit of discord let out a furious scream that sounded like it was caused by equal parts of frustration and rage, hinting to exactly how far under her skin Anastacia had somehow gotten. As her howling faded, so did her grasp on the room, which weakened the shadows and made the air ever so slightly easier to breathe.

Teal shook off the dust that had fallen on him when the ceiling boards above him had found their new place after the entire lodge had been moved and sprinted into the great hall with the intent of rushing outside to see what had happened, but almost instantly after getting through the front door, the adventurer jumped from behind the corner and trudged her way to him.

The inquisitor stared at the other necromancer, who was partly covered in black oily mess, completely drenched from head to toe as well as missing almost all of her weaponry and a sock for some reason. “What?” He asked bluntly, working around his curse.

“Spear magic. Long story short, Lumira is the murderer, I killed the snake, now I’m freezing my ass off.” Anastacia said and rushed past Teal to the relative warmth of the lodge. “What have you been up to?”

“Curse, can’t name things without harming them. Supposed to kill a beast to get free.” Teal sighed and followed her.

“Adorable. I can teach you goblin speak if you want? They make do without plenty of words.” Snickered the adventurer.

“Rather not sound like an idiot.” Teal said, causing the adventurer to suddenly flinch and let out a slight peep.

“Hey!” She yelled to the inquisitor and showed a fresh wound on her hand before realizing the implications of the word ‘idiot’ automatically referring to her, even through a curse cast on someone else by an ancient being. “HEY!” She exclaimed to the hag, who didn’t seem to care enough to respond to her. Teal failing to hold back his laughter didn’t help either.

Anastacia angrily stomped upstairs, trying her best to leave the inquisitor behind but couldn’t quite muster the strength after going through the snowbank and running around so much. She needed to change to a dry set of clothes but leaving Teal alone with Lumira even for a second was risky, now that he knew it was the dark elf who murdered Nikolai.

She glanced into Lumira’s room, where the vice commander waited with the projector in her arms and turned back to the inquisitor, whose hand she could feel tightening around the grip of his sword at the sight of the murderer. To make her point, Anastacia reached up and grabbed Teal by his hair and pulled him down to her level. “I’m only going to say this once: Lumira will be judged by the Vassundian authorities, and she will remain unharmed until I can hand her over to them. If you so much as think about having your revenge, there aren’t enough necromancers in the world to put you back together after I’m done with you.” She threatened. While it most definitely was a bit too much, the adventurer was done growing the list of failures on her quest report and she wasn’t about to let anyone else mess things up for her either. “So while I change, you behave yourself.” With her last warning, Anastacia shut herself into her room and left Teal by the door.

Knowing that his every movement was being monitored, the inquisitor stepped into the vice commander’s room and looked around a bit.

The blast wave had hit the room head on and more or less everything that wasn’t nailed to the floor had been tossed about. The dark elf herself had been hit with something as well, as she had a small mark on her forehead, but otherwise she appeared to be fine.

“Why?” Teal asked curtly.

Lumira smiled. She knew firsthand that Teal and Nikolai had been good friends, and to a degree, had considered the inquisitor as one of her own friends as well. “For my country and its people, something I thought you of all people might understand.”

The inquisitor could more or less connect the pieces in the vice commander’s plan, and to a degree he did actually understand it, after all, murder was hardly an issue for someone such as himself, but what he couldn’t wrap his head around was the intention to drag several nations into a war with each other for no better reason than to weaken them. Whether this was because he was relatively green as an inquisitor or because he still held on to his personal beliefs more firmly than most, it didn’t sit right with him at all and his grip on his sword tightened.

“Well, regardless, I have been caught now, and this hag ordeal has been brought to my attention. It changes up things quite a bit, since as I understand, the hag needs to be destroyed or there won’t be a Vassund no matter what I do.” Lumira said with a bit of a forced smile on her face and tapped the astral projector on her lap. “So, guess we’re allies for the time being.”

Teal pulled out his sword and pointed it at the dark elf, holding the tip about a meter away from her throat, since Anastacia would have no doubt interrupted him if he made it any closer. “Allied? A laughable suggestion.” He said and started to struggle to get his meaning across. “This false peace will crash and burn at a moment’s notice, expect it.”

“If you say so.” The vice commander sighed and hopped off the desk she had been sitting on. She walked closer to the tip of the inquisitor’s sword. “You should still know that I enjoyed none of it, yet I would do it again if given the choice. If you can’t understand why, I may have overestimated your conviction.”

Though he prided himself to be the calm type, the dark elf’s comment spilled a single droplet from the cauldron of self-restraint in Teal’s mind and he whispered the vice commander’s name.

Flinching from the sudden pain in her cheek, Lumira was extremely confused by the blood dripping down from the cut that appeared from nowhere. She rubbed the bright red blood between her fingers and took a step back, futilely trying to figure out what had happened.

Contemplating about causing a few more wounds with his curse, the inquisitor figured that at the very least one more was in order, and since Anastacia hadn’t reacted to the first one, he whispered Lumira’s name again and watched a red splotch appear on her uniform a few centimeters below the elf’s right collarbone. Only really getting started on appeasing his desire for revenge, or ‘justice’ as he would have branded it, Teal noticed something potentially extremely important: each one of the wounds he caused appeared to be deeper than the previous one. Based on the few examples he had seen, he only had a few more left before they would start to cause more serious injuries. Perhaps, after a few more, they could pose a threat to someone’s life as well – even someone who was almost untouchable with his usual abilities.

Lady Helia towered over a flock of servants and chefs that had been in the top floor of the lodge when the explosion outside had shaken the entire building and blown out most of the windows in the servant’s rooms.

Some of the braver among them had started talking about defying Anastacia’s order of staying in their rooms and go see what the situation downstairs was, but when the Ouan stepped out of Stel’s room, they all agreed that she seemed like the best candidate for such an expedition.

In a manner typical to someone of her standing in Ou, Lady Helia largely ignored the people she considered menial and servile, simply telling them to wait in their rooms until someone else came to deal with them and headed downstairs to see what was going on.

The hag had more or less left her alone after her initial offer, but she could still feel the stagnancy in the air, the corruption lurking in the shadows and the vile presence following her around, waiting to see what she does. Of course, the Ouan had no intention of leaving, partly because she still wanted to take Teal along with her, and partly because the darkness had lifted its head in her sight and it was her divine task to see it decapitated.

“You still intend to remain with the necromancers? They are plotting to stab you in the back as we speak, you know?” The ancient spirit suddenly ended her silence as the Ouan determinately headed towards the rest of her ongoing machinations instead of fleeing. “Perhaps there is one more gift I could give you to help you see things my way!”

With the spirit’s words, the scenery in the Ouan’s eyes suddenly distorted wildly. Lady Helia hastily grabbed ahold of the handrail running along the stairs with both hands to stay on her feet, letting her lantern fall and roll down the flight of stairs.

Lanterns from Valor had been made to withstand a fair bit of tossing, so it simply bounced a few times, rolled a couple of meters on the floor and stopped by a wall without so much as a dent, casting its light on something that was no longer a cozy wooden lodge.

The hag’s laughter echoed from the hallway, but her words sounded as if they were whispered directly into Lady Helia’s ear. “I have pulled back the shadows for you, finally you can see what truly lurks in the dark!” She said excitedly.

The ever-present darkness from the Ouan’s sight began slowly receding, as if it was being drained away, and as it retreated, it revealed what the lantern had given Helia a glimpse of. The wooden halls of the lodge had been decorated with blood and entrails, large patches of skin had been draped from the ceilings and countless coils of thorny vines grew from the lumber of the building itself.

Skittering along the floor were small, rat-like creatures with several bulging eyes growing on their patchy-haired bodies. These creatures dragged along pieces of meat, tendon and bone, fought over them and every now and then, gnawed on their precious catches.

The thorns grew densely along the walls and appeared to move whenever one as looking at them. Ranging between five and ten centimeters long and sharp as needless, they captured some of the rat-creatures and bled them to death by wrapping around them.

“Surely, this can’t be real?” Lady Helia asked and picked up her lantern.

“What did you think your cadre of gods were shielding you from by obscuring your sight? From fields of flowers and cuddly creatures? No, dear Helia, not at all. The darkness hides many things, and these are among the lesser ones. Vile little cretins of decay, once magnificent corrupted beings, necromancers, heretics and so much more!” The hag continued her whispers, every now and then appearing to move around slightly. “But all of this you knew already. After all it is what you have been working so hard to expunge all your life. Which makes what has happened so satisfying! You think the seed of corruption, so lovingly given to you by me, is disgusting beyond belief, but yet you have willingly surrendered for a much darker stain to take ahold of you.”

Lady Helia could feel a slight pressure on her chest, and when she looked down, a dark void rested over her heart. Blacker and deeper than anything she had seen before, it dwarfed the brand on her arm completely and almost looked like it was constantly spreading.

“You let this happen! Did it really never strike you as odd how eagerly the adventurer left Teal to your care? How easily the worst of the worst, an inquisitor of all things went along with your whims? Maybe despite all your training and religious brainwashing, you’re still a maiden at heart.” The hag said and let out a loud howling laugh.