The First Lich Lord
Chapter 65

The next day passed quickly. We alternated between running and walking to keep up our fast pace. We took a break during the day. In many ways, moving through the night was even better, so we allowed ourselves to bask in a meadow full of sunshine for a few hours.

We kept an eye on the map. The dots had changed course and were trying to catch up with us. One had found the road we were on, and they were about a day behind. Clearly the pace was not the same as ours, I was just thankful Maxwell could last as long as he could. I was pretty certain I could run for twenty-four hours straight if need be.

We were approaching a village nestled within the forest. It wasn’t large, the map only showing a small indication that it was even there. Since it was now near midnight, and the first building was in sight, we decided to skirt around the village.

As we were about halfway around, I heard something and glanced at Raven. She was looking toward the village. “Did you hear that?”

“Something is going on.” Raven’s ears twitched. “I hear heavy footsteps.”

A bloodcurdling scream split the night. We stood frozen in indecision. I wanted to go help whoever was in need, but it would slow me down. Then there was another scream, followed by another, then the wail of a child.

“They’re being attacked,” Raven said. “I don’t know by whom.”

I was already moving. I didn’t know what was going on, but whoever these villagers were, I doubted they deserved to be slaughtered in their sleep. I thought about what Friar Brown and I discussed on what true evilness was. And if this wasn’t that I didn’t know what would classify as evil. Small villages were full of simple people living simple, quiet lives. They didn’t care about religion or politics, nor did they take sides. They just did their jobs and went on with their lives.

Maybe I was biased, I grew up in a small town. But regardless of my reasoning, I decided to act.

I kept my illusion in place as I rushed through the night. Maxwell, not wanting to break our stealth, pulled a short sword and buckler. Raven drew her two new daggers.

As we rushed past the buildings and came to the main street, we saw a group of men herding villagers toward the center of the town. Now that we were closer, I could hear the murmuring and sniffles of people. I saw a body lying next to a building, unmoving.

We were still hidden deep within the shadows, unseen by whoever these assailants were. I gestured for Raven and Maxwell to wait. My eyes fixed on a man standing near the center, he wore armor and wielded a weapon that looked oddly familiar. I focused my gaze, hoping to receive a prompt, but none ever came. That isn’t uncommon. If you don’t have enough information, you can’t always tell what you are facing.

I reformed Mercy’s tip into a javelin, adding barbs as I studied the man and his weapon. Then it hit me what the weapon was—it was a blood weapon, like what Friar Brown and I had fought. Though it wasn’t a powerful one, it was still a great threat. The weapon had a fishhook at the end of a heavy curved blade and appeared to be a second-grade blood weapon, or common ranked. That meant it would have some ability I would need to watch for.

I sincerely hoped we weren’t about to start a fight that we couldn’t win.

I cocked my arm back and took aim. “If we can, I don’t want to kill the leader. We need to talk to him. I’ll draw their attention, you two stay in the shadows.” I received confirmation grunts from Maxwell and Raven.

Taking careful aim, I threw Mercy with all my strength at the leader, who no doubt had the strength to survive the attack. And if he didn’t, I figured this was no great threat at all.

Mercy flew true and struck the man in the chest. The razor-sharp point bit into his armor and he gasped in pain. I rushed out of the shadows, reaching for Mercy and pulled it back to me. The barbs yanked the man toward me, tearing at his flesh. Mercy ripped free, leaving a gaping wound pouring blood. Once the weapon reentered my hand, I reshaped its tip into a long straight blade.

The wound was festering, and to the man’s credit, he reacted quickly. He ground his teeth and produced a potion, drank it, then splashed some of it into the wound. His armor was brown leather studded with bits of metal. And he snarled as he lunged at me.

Shouts of alarm picked up. But even as they did, I saw Raven leap on the back of an occultist out of the corner of my eye, driving daggers into his neck. Dark magic flooded from her hands and blasted through the daggers. Before his companions could react, she jumped off of him, yanking the daggers free and disappearing into a shadow.

I didn’t see where Maxwell was, but his skill with the blade would be enough to keep him safe. Eventually, if the fight prolonged, he would pull out his guitar. For now, he was more effective striking from the shadows.

I focused my attention on the leader, exchanging a series of testing blows. His followers rushed toward me, but it became clear I had a skill advantage. The long hours of training with Vito and my precognition ability showed their worth. The blade staff was both a powerful offensive and defensive weapon. I fell into a defensive position.

With one hand, I twirled Mercy, able to block their blows due to my incredible strength. In the other hand, I worked magic. I took the time to build a powerful attack spell, one I only recently got access to.

Dark lightning crackled along my hand, and I pointed my finger like a gun, firing a bolt at the nearest cultist. The lightning struck him and leapt into another nearby cultist who screamed out. The lightning continued to branch and leap from one target to another. Though its power decreased with each target, the initial strikes pumped so much energy through them that their bodies smoked.

As the spell faded, four cultists collapsed to the ground dead. Death lightning was a powerful attack spell, but it drained all of my available mana. The rest was tied up in maintaining my illusion. There weren’t too many cultists around, and Maxwell and Raven were cutting down others who were still rushing toward the fight. Their levels were not high, with the exception of the man wielding the blood weapon.

Before I could take advantage of the opportunity to take out the leader, he waved his weapon. Streams of blood ripped out of the surrounding cultists and whipped at me, making me wince in pain as they cut into my body.

What hurt wasn’t the actual physical attacks, but the magic contained within. Blood magic is deeply seated in life magic, and in some ways, you could say it’s even extreme life magic. I didn’t know where it initially came from, but my guess was some cleric in the far past went a little too far with his pursuit of healing and the essence of life and developed this accursed magic.

I rushed toward the leader, and with a downward swipe, swatted his blade aside. The tendrils of blood still reached after me, and as I spun, I used Mercy to sever multiple of them. As soon as the blade passed through the strands, the blood fell to the ground in droplets, only for them to regrow. The effect of the tendrils was still in place. I spun and landed a shallow cut between the plates of armor on the man’s thigh, but then I had to spring back as his deadly blade came for me.

More tendrils reached me as blood from the cultists slain by Raven and Maxwell arched across the village. I tried to land as many wounds as I could on the leader, but the ability of his blade was powerful and the tendrils’ numbers continued to grow. With the small amount of mana I’d regenerated, I dove toward one of the bodies and cast my weakest raise dead spell. I funneled as much death energy into it as I could to enhance the weak magic.

The zombie that rose was nothing spectacular, but as soon as it took hold, the tendrils spreading out of the body fell apart. It didn’t take long for the zombie to be cut down by the tendrils, and when it fell back to the ground the blood magic didn’t take hold again.

Raven and Maxwell must’ve seen my plight, because Raven came sprinting out of the shadows as Maxwell played a song that sped both her and I up. Raven added a dark magic spell to her daggers. Pitch-black energy bled off her daggers as she tore into the man’s flank. He struck downward, but Raven’s agility kept her just barely ahead of the blade.

I dove toward another body, but didn’t have the mana to raise it. Instead, I poured death energy directly into the body. The flesh desiccated and rotted away rather than a zombie being created, though it wasn’t for nought, because the scarlet tendrils cut off almost immediately.

As Maxwell’s music persisted, and Raven distracted the leader, I moved from body to body, desiccating them until there were only a few tendrils left. I reshaped Mercy into a spiked hammer and struck the leader from behind, driving the heavy spike into the man’s left shoulder.

The blow caught him completely by surprise and drove him to his knees. I had no doubt I’d shattered every bone on the way down, and the festering wound left in his body would be devastating. I resisted pouring death energy into it, since that would no doubt kill him. Instead, Raven and I proceeded to hamstring and further incapacitate the man. When his blood weapon fell from his grip, I kicked it away and rammed my knee into his chest knocking him flat on his back.

The sudden silence that followed was heavy, and I stared down at the man’s wide eyes. “Who are you and where did you get that weapon?” I demanded.

The terror filling his eyes was all the answer I received. He wasn’t like the others I’d fought before. This wasn’t a trained fighter, this was just some guy.

May as well give him something to truly be afraid of. I bent down close to him and let my illusion slip away around my head. The black bone of my skull showed through, and the stringy tendrils of flesh crisscrossing my head only served to amplify the visage. My eyes burned as I stared at him.

“I’ll ask you again.” My voice was a whisper so quiet that no one else could hear. “You will answer me, or I will bind your soul to me for all of eternity, and you will yield to me in servitude.”

There wasn’t any reason for the man not to believe me—I didn’t actually have that ability, not yet anyways.

“I-I-I-I,” he stuttered and then swallowed hard as his face went even whiter. “I found it when I was exploring.”

“Why use it to harm these people?” I demanded, letting the illusion cover me once again.

“The blade,” he responded in a whisper. “It s-spoke to me. It told me that if I followed its commands, I would become powerful.”

“So, you gathered followers and made the same promise.”

“Victor?” a female voice said. A woman wrapping her arms around herself was cautiously approaching.

“You know him?” I asked.

“Yes, he was my husband,” she said. “He disappeared months ago.”

I looked between the woman and the small crowd of villagers behind her and back down at Victor. My gaze swept over the blade and the bodies of the cultists we’d killed. I let out a growl of anger. I ripped Mercy from the ground where I planted it, reforming the blade into a heavy axe. I stared down at Victor as it lifted into the air.

“You said you wouldn’t to kill me!” he pleaded.

“No, I said I would enslave your soul.” Mercy arced down.

His wife cried out, “Wait! Please don’t kill him, he is a good man!”

I paused, Mercy an inch from his neck. I lifted the blade back and looked at the woman. “A good man? How can you say that? I can accept the possibility that the weapon was controlling him. Except he brought it back to his village and used it against those he once called friend and family. I don’t buy that. Mental control doesn’t mean you no longer have any options. He could’ve gone someplace else.”

I shook my head and swung Mercy down once again.

Victor twitched. “Run! He’s a—” Victor’s words cut off as Mercy sunk into the ground, severing head from body. Blood pooled and I yanked the weapon free.

“You monster!” the woman screamed, scrambling over to the fallen man.

I just shook my head and walked away, Raven coming up beside me. “I am not a monster, that man was a monster.”

A man with a graying mustache stepped away from the clustered villagers and bowed to me. “I thank you. You have saved my village.”

“I didn’t save everyone…”

“You did all you could. Truth is, if that truly is Victor, we can all understand why he came here and killed her. Such a shame, she was a good, if misguided person.”

I gave him a questioning look—was there perhaps one person of interest for Victor, and his group’s slaughter of all those innocents was simply collateral damage?

The man continued. “Her name was Chelsea. Rumor was that her and Victor were having an affair. Victor’s wife knew, and Victor knew that she knew. We all assumed that was why he disappeared. Victor did not deserve Tif…” He nodded toward the woman crying over the headless body. “She would’ve forgiven him, no doubt. But there’s nothing we can do now except for move on.”

I stared at the village elder for a long moment. What had these people faced? The residents of Omark had also been surprisingly resistant, though they hadn’t faced anything so tragic. Before I could ask, some of the villagers began to light torches. The flickering light revealed a gruesome scene.

“Sorry for the mess,” I said. The desiccated corpses were horrific to say the least.

The man went slightly green at the sight, but the shock of the situation overrode that, and he once again addressed me. “If you had not come along, we would all be dead. We owe you a great debt. How may we help you in your journey?”

I glanced to the blood weapon lying on the ground. “We’re being pursued, and I don’t know if you can help me with that matter. But I do need to do something about that. It had possessed Victor, though that is no excuse for what he did.”

“I suspected there was something off in that boy for a long time,” the elder said.

Maxwell began to play an uplifting song that seemed to soothe some of the villagers. It even stilled my nerves.

I picked up the blood weapon, and felt the presence immediately. My mind was more than it had a hope of tangling with. I also knew enough about weapon smithing to understand the best way to approach the task of destroying it. “I need an anvil, or some kind of hard slab.”

The elder gestured for me to follow and he led us into a small workshop. Seated on one side was an old anvil and forge.

“Thank you,” I said, and got to work.

Raven left with the elder, and soon the local smith came in. I told him what I was trying to accomplish, and he nodded and set to work. He wasn’t a skilled smith, likely a man who wore many hats, but he knew enough to be of assistance.