Since he’d first become the priest of Quox, he’d never once been told there was an emergency to gather them all at once. Even when the wise one had escaped, he alone had been contacted to deal with it due to being the only one in the village with his skill advancing beyond its limits, and when he stretched his memories to his youth before he’d taken over the role he couldn’t say it had happened before either.

The fact spoke of an emergency of unprecedented levels as all five priests went not to the public statues where they’d usually speak, letting the other believers experience half of the conversation between the gods and their mortal voices, but instead to a private area away from stray ears as they looked nervously amongst themselves, wondering just what they were going to have to deal with.

It was the god he represented, Quox who spoke first, even if they could feel the presence of the other four within their minds, and the news he brought was a nightmare.

He told them firmly.

“Of course my lord, we’ll happily lay down our lives to protect the others,” Toltho said confidently, noises of agreement coming from the others before they were all quickly silenced.

The god spat out.

He was stunned. In a situation like that chaos would ensue. There were a few hundred of them that made up the village, moving them all so quickly wouldn’t be an easy feat no matter the situation, and to release all of the lesser ones without even keeping a breeding pair was unprecedented.

It wasn’t him who picked up on the most important part though, but Empa as she asked for clarification, more than ready to follow any order given.

“Bodies my lord?”

If they weren’t fighting to protect the others and weren’t confronting the enemy head-on, then what bodies could there be? It was only Toltho, the sole member of the priests to harbor a hint of doubt in the gods he served so devotedly that felt a pit form in his stomach as he got the answer as the god Haro spoke up.

The other gods spoke up, agreeing with the order as the other four priests were ready to get to it, seemingly indifferent to the idea that they’d be slaughtering their own kind so long as they could fulfill the will of the beings they loved so much, but Toltho only felt empty. The village was everyone he’d ever known, everyone he loved. He spent each day talking to them, helping them and growing with them, and he was being told to put them down like any other animal.

He thought his god might say something, might speak up to the thoughts he was having, but got only the same hollow words as the rest, leaving him to deal with a single truth. Even though his god was powerful, could hear the thoughts in the deepest corners of his mind, he didn’t care to. This was a task that was expected of him, and as far as they were concerned it would be carried out.

Leaving the tent, the priest ran off to where the lesser ones were kept due to being the one with the highest taming level while the rest gathered the villagers in the center of town.

Word had spread that all of the priests had been gathered for a private meeting and worry came from it. For good or ill, they all knew something was happening, it was only as the final priest Caz spoke up, the most fanatical of all, that they got to understand what happened to their collective shock and horror.

“Rejoice friends! The gods have seen fit to not only warn us of a coming threat, but to give many of you the chance to work for the good of us all! I only wish I could be so lucky to give my life for them, but it seems I won’t be blessed with such a fate yet!”

It was as he spoke that it became clear that the news they were going to receive was far from as good as his devotion made it sound, with the sharper among them gaining a deep look of fear as they understood that they were going to be asked something life-threatening.

“It seems the strange ones are coming, and in a force we cannot stop,” Caz continued. “By now the lesser ones have been freed to slow them as best as we can, but that won’t be enough, so our gods have given the order, as much as it hurts them so, that all who might slow us down must lay down their lives for the good of the rest. To so clearly be able to show your devotion, how I envy you all.”

It hurts them. Does it hurt them? I’ve always been told how deeply they love us, how deeply any harm coming to us harms them too, but does it really? Was the worry on their voices for us as they gave these orders?

The crowd was silent as they understood what they were being asked. They weren’t being told to die fighting the strange ones, they were being told to die before that, to sacrifice themselves for the rest, and before Toltho could react to it, one of them did just that.

A fellow hunter, he saw old man Zex in the crowd pull out the knife he’d always kept on his waist, even after the injury to his leg kept him from hunting anymore. He’d helped teach Toltho all he knew of the art, was the one to get him to walk the path of stealth when he’d found that he had no skill for any magic but death, and was the one who gave him advice when he struggled with his faith in his own youth, helping him become the sort of man who would become one of the five priests, and before his eyes while in the middle of the crowd he dragged that knife across his throat after hearing one of the surest ways he could serve his gods.

The people around him screamed and Toltho did his best not to be sick then and there. He was no stranger to blood and death, the invisibility he had access to was more than enough to leave him as the village’s most important hunter, but through it all the other priests didn’t flinch, with Caz almost reveling in it.

“Yes! He understood! He knew his own weakness and did what he had to to truly serve the gods, but what of the rest of you? Of course, if you are strong and well you need to live on to give your faith to maintain all we have, but how many of you are old, are sick, are injured… are children.”

Even Caz seemed to hesitate there for only a brief second, his young daughter standing amongst the others but just as likely to slow them down as they went while Toltho stared at the rest. It looked like some were ready to act almost as quickly as Zex had, looking for something nearby to get the job done as others looked on in fear. The elderly who wanted to live on, the injured who just needed time to heal, the parents who held their children tightly, not knowing what to do as the children cried, the boy and girl he’d spoken to just earlier among them, one so happily looking forward to the future, the other questioning the gods when she was too young to know better, and it was as he looked out to all of them that he made his choice, speaking up for the first time as he did.

“No.”