“Beware what you wish for, for at times it might just come true in the worst way possible.” - Old folk saying.

“Since you wish for Immortality so much that you are willing to sacrifice your own people on such a scale to achieve it, then you shall have it! We hereby CURSE you an eternity of life, one that you shall never be able to enjoy in any way, where pain and suffering shall be your only companion forever and ever!” intoned the Deity of Life to the mad king in her grasp.

Before everyone’s eyes, the mad king’s body started to bulge and shift. His once statuesque form deformed itself as flesh grew uncontrollably all over his body in grotesque ways. The man could not even scream as his body turned into a pulsating mass of tumorous growth, the Life mana that overflowed within his existence finding an outlet beyond his control.

The Deity’s manifestation released the mad king – or rather, the thing that was formerly known as the king of Vitalica – and the mass of tumors fell on the ground with a wet splat as some of the abscesses burst upon impact and leaked out disgusting pus all over the floor. Fortunately the Deity dropped him far enough away from Aideen and Kino to spare them from the disgusting splatter.

“You shall live forever, as you wished for so dearly, in this cursed form where you shall have none of the pleasures of life and all its suffering. Mayhaps this will teach you the folly of what you have done, but we doubt that will be the case,” the Deity’s manifestation continued. “Nor shall you trouble others ever again, for you shall spend the rest of your existence in isolation, where none will be bothered by your grotesqueness.”

Moments after the Deity’s Incarnation spoke the words, the earth shook and a fissure opened right in the middle of the Royal Palace. The fissure created a chasm so deep that its bottom could not be seen from above, and it came to existence directly below the mass of tumors that was once Ver’dun Slovak, king of Vitalica. As the chasm grew wider, his grotesque form finally tumbled into the seemingly bottomless depths and disappeared from sight.

Then the chasm closed up, with only the broken and displaced marble tiles of the palace as a mark that it ever happened.

Stolen from its rightful author, this tale is not meant to be on Amazon; report any sightings.

Its task apparently done, the manifestation of the Deity looked around the empty city and seemed to sigh as its shoulders slumped a bit. It then looked at Aideen and Kino and they both felt as if the Deity looked at them kindly, before the figure dissipated into thin air once more. Aideen would have thought that she dreamed the whole thing if the Royal Palace was not full of damage caused by their fight with the mad king, to be honest.

“That… was a Deity, wasn’t it?” stammered Kino after she finally found her voice. Aideen and Kino found themselves able to move their bodies once more once the manifestation of the Deity left, but even so it still took them a moment longer to recollect their wit after the sight they had just witnessed with their own eyes.

It was one thing to read about them in the history books, but a whole other thing altogether to witness a Deity take action in the flesh, especially from such close proximity.

When Aideen considered it later, she noted that what the mad king did probably angered the Deity because of his vicious methods and deluded thinking that the success to his pursuit of immortality meant a blessing from the Deity of Life. Clearly said Deity disagreed with him, though, and it was a hard enough disagreement to make them act in person to deal with the mad king.

As for the fate that befell the madman, it was one that made Aideen shudder at the thought. The Deity likely meant it when they said that the mad king shall live for eternity while only having pain and suffering as his accompaniment. With that body that was pretty much turned into a mass of tumors and the isolation from being buried deep underground… it was a fate Aideen wouldn’t have wished for even on her enemies.

The two of them slowly walked out of the palace after Aideen healed their injuries that the mad king left with his last few blows, though they looked back often as they walked. Such a Divine phenomenon was likely visible from afar. She recalled the time when Grandpa Aarin told her how when Igunacio’s Wrath occurred it was something even people in Ur-Teros noticed despite the incident itself happening in Alcidea.

With the scale of this current incident and the divine intervention that ended it, it was likely that the same thing happened, so people around the world were likely made aware of what happened in Danna.

For Aideen and Kino, though, it was not their primary worry. Instead the two of them headed to the north-western corner of the city to look for Aideen’s grand-nephew and nieces, who were likely still there, looking for survivors of the ritual and helping them as best they could, as Aideen asked them to do before they headed to the palace.

Aideen had no idea how receptive the locals would be to their help, given their lifelong indoctrination on how everything related to the undead were supposedly horrible, heretical things, but somehow she felt that a people that had just undergone such a devastating loss would likely take any help that came, no matter the source.

Some fanatics might refuse and even get violent, but the three siblings should be able to handle those without too much issue. Besides, she had the inkling that the more fanatical Vitalicans were also the wealthier ones. Such people wouldn’t be living in the slum regions.

As such, they should not face too much trouble while they looked for any survivors and helped out as they could.