Vol.2 Ch.19 – Best Served Hot

Chapter 19: Best Served Hot

It took me some time to digest this new information. By the time I trusted myself to speak again we had already entered the keep and found it arranged not entirely different from the last one we'd been to.

Off to one side was the servant's quarters, barracks and kitchen and off to the other side a stairway led down to what I assumed would be a dungeon. However, where the keep of Selene's Dark Lord had been a dingy little place, this one was on an entirely different scale. It was also, thankfully, not made from the same rotten flesh as the outer walls, though moss-like growths of that stuff were dotted around the black stone of the keep. I assumed the stuff would have been too weak to support a multi story structure. Just as I'd done with the last keep we'd visited I suggested we work our way through the lower floors to make sure there was nothing left alive to ambush us. The Chosen One had grumbled about the extra work but I could tell getting stabbed in the back didn't appeal to him. Oh, if only he knew.

So, you're saying this Dark Lord is in league with the one who stole your body?, I asked Syr as we carefully made our way to the kitchen.

I can't be too sure but with all the Outsiders and tainted beings around it seems rather likely, she replied.

Then I guess this bastard will be a prime opportunity to gather some valuable information on her, I said.

I heard her chuckle in my head. Here I am worried about the implications and you see this as a good opportunity. I would say I can't tell if you're optimistic or naive, but I know it's the former.

I snorted, earning a confused glance from Alisha. There was nothing snort-worthy in this dark hallway. I'm not an optimist, I told Syr. I'm a cynical bastard.

This time it was her turn to snort.

I am, I protested. If he thinks it could save his life to tattle, he will.

You haven't seen the kind of loyalty she inspires in people, Syr said quietly. It's scary. They'd jump off cliffs if she told them to.

If he's a fanatical follower that might be just as good, I remarked.

Fair, she said. But it's still weird that you're not disturbed by this.

Oh, I am, I told her. Dark Lords shouldn't be consorting with Outsiders. Fighting them should be the one thing that Dark Lords and Chosen Ones are willing to put their differences aside for.

We were quiet for a few steps before I asked Syr:

So, that milk of hers heals wounds?

I could feel the distinct impression of her moving her hand in a kinda-sorta gesture. I think it induces mutations, but it can be used to heal in a pinch if you're not worried about the consequences afterwards, she said.

So no looting any suspicious red potions off our enemies, got it, I said. Shame. I thought it might have been a true elixir.

She chuckled. I wouldn't even know what a true elixir was if I didn't have your memories, you know?, she said. But since I do, do you really think an orc chieftain would have something as valuable as a true elixir with him?

No, I said. Not really.

True elixirs were the pinnacle of alchemy, the greatest thing an alchemist could produce. It was a ruby-red liquid that could cure absolutely any injury or illness, make someone stronger and increase their lifespan. Rumor had it that a true elixir could also give someone the potential to use magic even if they weren't born with it, which was said to be impossible even with divine intervention. It was also so expensive to make that the royal family could probably bankrupt themselves if they bought the ingredients to produce a mere dozen bottles.

We kicked the door to the kitchen down and found a dozen boars being roasted on spits. At first I thought that this was much nicer than the last Dark Lord's kitchen we'd seen, which had had a human on a spit, but then I realized that the gloomy aura around this castle probably scared the humans off to the point where the Dark Lord had little choice but to feed his troops normal meat.

Off in a corner was a rather enormous ice box and it held a few dozen vials of the red milk. I pocketed a couple, but only after very carefully labeling them so that nobody would drink them by accident.

Once we had cleaned out the kitchen we sneaked towards the barracks and we found a few orcs and goblins who had somehow slept through the commotion in the courtyard, I assumed because they'd had the night shift last night and were still dead tired. Either way, we didn't want to take any chances so I had Alisha use her magic to steal their breath away while I stabbed them to death so that they wouldn't be able to scream and alert the others. I could have just let Alisha kill them all, but she wasn't someone to kill in cold blood, even if someone deserved it, and I wanted to keep her innocence intact as long as possible.

After dealing with the left wing we turned towards the right wing, which led down into the basement. To my surprise, the basement wasn't a dungeon. Or rather, it wasn't just a dungeon. A large part of it was a wine cellar. Well, wine and foods that kept well. Clearly this Dark Lord was in it for the long haul.

Another part of the basement was a dungeon and, after our last experience, I made sure to break all the locks on the doors and shackles before we moved on.

However, it was the final part of the basement that concerned me. It looked like a cross between a doctor's office and a torture chamber, with large tables that had manacles on all corners and small tables full of medical instruments.

One of the occupied tables held a goblin with a drip of the blood red breast milk leading into his veins. The milk was clearly having a rather adverse effect on the little shit. It was pale and had goat eyes like the goblins outside but the veins stood out prominently and there was a growth forming on its chest.

Is this...?, I asked in my mind.

Looks like they're using the red milk to try and grow the Black Goat's canker hearts, Syr confirmed.

It looks more organic than normal, I remarked.

And it did. On the Hecatoncheir, the Equoids and on all the cultists I'd seen so far these cankers had looked poorly grafted on, as if someone or something had ripped their flesh open and then shoved a foreign organ into the wound that had then sprouted vein-like roots that burrowed into the flesh. On the wendigo it had looked less out of place, but that was only because the wendigo had had their entire skin turn the same maggot flesh color as the canker. But on this goblin it looked like the canker was perfectly integrated with his flesh. Well, not perfectly since there was still a clear bulge on its chest, but it looked as though it had grown naturally rather than been grafted on.

Are you as eager to torch this entire research project as I am?, I asked Syr.

Yes, she replied without hesitation. If this is allowed to continue or if these results leak it could compromise this entire world to the Outsiders.

I had been so focused on my discussion with Syr that I had completely forgotten what was happening around me. There was another occupied table and whatever was on it had made Alisha retch so hard that Selene had to go console her. Yume looked queasy as well but tried to keep calm and even the Chosen One seemed upset. When I saw what was on the table I wanted to retch as well.

On this table lay a human. Like the goblin on the other table he had a drip feed of the red milk going into his arm. Unlike the goblin, he didn't have a canker forming on his chest. Instead someone had cut open his stomach and had inserted clamps to hold the wound open. Next to the table sat a bucket full of guts. When I looked into the wound I saw a huge part of his intestines missing, but what was left was... bubbling. Every time a drop of the red milk dripped down the guts grew back a tiny little bit and I realized that the bucket full of guts had all been taken from this man. They'd just kept him chained to the table, carved out his guts and then fed him something that regrew them.

They're testing the limits of the milk's regenerative abilities, Syr said, much more calmly than I expected.

Either that or they're trying to test how much trauma it takes for the milk to heal rather than transform, I said. I really hope that poor fucker is dead or unconscious.

He's not, she said. Look at his face again.

I looked up and wanted to retch again. Two more clamps held his throat open. I wasn't all that good with anatomy but I was fairly sure he was missing his vocal chords. I looked up at his face. The man was awake, his gaze darting around frantically. His mouth moved but no sounds came out.

I swallowed hard then pulled out my ax and walked over to him and said: “Blink once if you want me to end it, twice if you don't.”

Blink.

I swung the ax.

**

“Yume, would you mind burning this entire... laboratory”, I practically spat the word, “to the ground? Nobody in this world needs the results of this research.” The Chosen One seemed like he wanted to protest for just a moment but then thought better of it. I didn't know whether he was interested in the research or just didn't like Yume taking orders from me but I didn't care.

When we were all out of the laboratory Yume threw a fireball laced with Qi at it. The screams of the goblin told us that it had had the desired effect.

**

This keep was laid out quite differently from that of the previous Dark Lord we'd fought. Where the last one had had a tower with many stories but small floors, this keep was spread out but only had two stories and a basement so when we walked up the stairs to the second floor we were already on the highest floor and only a corridor was between us and the throne room.

The corridor, however, was disturbing. It took me a moment to understand what I was seeing. There was the same bumpy texture the rotting walls outside had had, complete with staring eyes and grasping arms except instead of rotting flesh the tissue was black and glistening like the skin of the Dark Young. And this texture took up the walls, the ceiling and even the floor. When I tried to take a tentative step onto the black stuff, scythe-like arms came out of the gunk and slashed at me. A death trap, then.

“I guess you need to be corrupted to a certain extent to be able to pass through here unharmed”, I thought out loud.

“Well I don't feel like getting one of these cankers grafted on”, the Chosen One said.

“Then feel free to burn this gunk off”, I told him.

“Yume, burn it”, he said.

Yume's collar flashed and she threw a huge fireball. It did some damage but the gunk crawled back over the place she'd scorched within moments.

“My fire magic is not strong enough, Master”, she told him.

Of course I was sure she could have burned it away if I'd asked her but she clearly wanted him to exhaust his supply of miracles early. Clever girl.

“Tch. Fine, I'll do it”, he said and cast his fire storm miracle.

Instantly a gigantic gout of fire came out of his gauntlet and filled the entire corridor in front of us with red and orange fire that clung to all the surfaces and burned down all traces of the murderous gunk.

Alisha looked a bit queasy at the destruction it caused but I felt like this corridor had been a stroke of luck. If we had to turn on the Chosen One he wouldn't be able to hit us with this miracle anymore. Now, if I could get him to use his battering ram as well...

We waited for a few moments to let the embers cool before we stepped up to the large double doors that would lead to the throne room. The Chosen One and I tried to push it open and unfortunately it actually did open and so I wouldn't be able to make him waste his other offensive miracle as well.

We walked into the throne room and it looked surprisingly normal. The entryway was narrow, with half a dozen pillars flanking a red carpet but after the pillars the room opened up to a large rectangular shape. It was made of black stone and a large glass dome at the top let in just enough light to give the place a gloomy feel without it being pitch black. In the darkest corners I saw more of the black gunk and large eyes staring out of it, but oddly those few spots were the only corrupted spots in the entire throne room. At the far end sat an elaborate throne that looked to be made of twisted roots. Off to the sides large steel bars probably held cages of the beasts the Dark Lord was controlling, though they were shrouded in darkness.

“Well well well”, the Dark Lord said from his throne and I was somewhat relieved to see that he was in fact the one whose face we'd seen greet us in Shackled Hollow. One Dark Lord controlling Outsiders was bad enough, a second would have been unacceptable. “Someone actually made it through all my troops and traps. I welcome you, brave heroes.” His voice held surprisingly little contempt as he spoke but that only made me more cautious.

“Sorry it took so long to get here”, the Chosen One said and pointed his sword at him, “but we had to take out all your pets on the way.”

The Dark Lord smiled.

Now that we were close I could finally get a good look at him. He wore armored leggings and his right arm was armored as well, but his chest and left arm were bare. They had to be, because no armor would fit him anymore. His chest held a pulsing tumor and his left arm was no longer an arm so much as a scythe of twisted flesh. The skin of the canker and the arm was purple like a bruise, twisted into unnatural shapes with thick veins running along the outside of the limb like ropes of pulsing intestines and several eyes were staring out of the limb. And at the end of it, where his hand should have been, the twisted flesh branched off into five growths that looked like fingers but instead of being usable digits they were just connection points between his arm and the half-organic curved blade his limb ended in. Like the goblin in the basement his canker was perfectly integrated with his flesh and it didn't look like a graft at all, the only evidence of it being a foreign object being the purple color that spread over half of his upper body and along his cheek. His face was fairly handsome except for the purple blotches on the left side and he had long silky black hair that hung down to his shoulders.

“So what did you think of my pets?”, he asked us, genuinely excited to have someone to talk to. “Weren't they impressive?”

I decided to just get it over with and ask. “Why would a Dark Lord work with Outsiders? What god are you serving?”, I asked him and his brow furrowed.

Then he smiled and gestured at his left arm. “Do you truly need me to spell it out for you?”, he asked.

“You mean to say you're a Dark Lord who was given his powers by the Black Goat?”

He giggled. No shit, he giggled like a little girl. “Yes!”, he said. “The first Dark Lord She has ever chosen, isn't it amazing?”

“That makes no sense”, I said. “She should have no influence on this world. She shouldn't be able to choose anyone, let alone a Dark Lord.”

His giggle turned into a slightly lower chuckle. “Well, it is true that I've never met Her”, he said. “It's a shame, really. But I'm doing my best to open the way for Her!” Oh shit. “No, the one who chose me wasn't the Dark Mother Herself, it was Her Holy Maiden, Her mouthpiece in this world.”

“This Holy Maiden”, I said, “describe her.”

He smiled wistfully. “She is gorgeous”, he said. “Tall, with long straight black hair and pale skin and a body fertile enough to be fit to represent the Dark Mother.” Well, that answered everything I needed to know. The description fit Syr's body perfectly.

“That's what I expected”, I said, then pulled out my sword. “After we beat the shit out of you I'll have you tell us everything you can about her.”

His jovial demeanor evaporated. “I'm afraid I can't have that”, he said. “I cannot share her secrets, she forbade it.”

“I don't really care what she wants, you're going to tell us”, I said.

“Very well then”, he said. “If you truly intend to take the information by force, I guess I need to stop you. But before we begin”, he paused and turned to the Chosen One. “Would you like to join my cause?”

“Why the fuck would I do that?”, the Chosen One asked.

“Tell me, Chosen One of Ares”, the Dark Lord said. “These warriors you brought with you, do you truly care for them? Do you even care about your god? What is it that you want?”

The Chosen One seemed to consider, then said: “What I want is simple. I want power. I want glory.”

The Dark Lord smiled. “My Goddess could give you all of that”, he said. “Ares is just one god of just one pantheon. His is not the strongest pantheon in this world and he is far from the strongest god in it. But if my Goddess wins She will rule the world. And you would be part of the elect, those who paved the way for Her. More power and glory in that, wouldn't you agree?”

The Chosen One seemed to actually be considering it.

“Let me sweeten the deal for you”, the Dark Lord said. “I know what you really want is for your pet”, he gestured at Yume, “to adore you. She obeys you, but you can only make her obey the letter of your commands, you cannot make her respect you.” The Chosen One ground his teeth. “But I have ways of making her docile for you, both as a Dark Lord and as a follower of the Dark Mother.”

The Chosen One took a deep breath, then said: “Deal.”

The Dark Lord smiled beatifically and said: “Then subjugate them and I will give you all that you desire.”

Out of the corner of my eye I saw Yume wriggle her wrist and the dispelling stiletto fell into her left hand.

The Chosen One turned around and smiled at us and the smile looked utterly deranged. Next to him Yume raised the dispelling stiletto to her neck, only a few moments away from jabbing the knife into her collar. I just needed to buy a few seconds.

“So”, I asked the Chosen One, my tone deceptively casual, “I guess that means our contract with you has expired, then?”

But instead of answering he said: “Yume, subjugate them.”

Yume's face fell. The dispelling stiletto clattered to the floor. And light blue haze exploded out of her.

**

I had known that Yume's illusion magic was stronger than her power over fire. And since her fire magic was already fairly impressive I knew that Yume was capable of far more than just dazing enemies for a while. Thus, I had been prepared for a powerful hit of illusion magic, but I had grossly underestimated the extent of her power. Thankfully, the Chosen One's command had been both very precise and very vague. She had to subjugate us, but he hadn't told her how. She couldn't disobey him, but she was able to choose how to obey him. She could have cast Stupor on us and cut us down. Instead she tried something different.

She stared at me, her normally azure eyes changing color until they were golden like the sun and then they seemed to expand around me until her gaze was the only thing I could see. She didn't feel like a cute fox girl anymore. She felt like a goddess, ancient and powerful, and far behind her eyes I thought I saw nine tails undulating. I didn't know whether this was what the presence of a tenko was like but I did know that the presence felt crushing. The twin suns of her gaze burned down on me and I saw a starry sky around them as I dropped to my knees.

She didn't speak. Speech was far too crude a concept for her. She didn't even put words into my mind. She bombarded me with impressions, with feelings and images. The feeling of being shackled to her will, of scrambling to fulfill her every whim, of dying for her if she demanded it. I could feel these impressions burrowing their way into my mind and even after steeling myself for her mental attack I knew I would only be able to hold her off for a few more seconds before I broke under her compulsion.

Then, very faintly, I heard words. Not illusory impressions but real words.

“Why are you only subjugating him?”, the Chosen One demanded. “The other two are just dazed!”

The twin suns in front of me wavered as I heard the goddess of my little world say: “It's delicate work. I have to do them one after the other.”

Most of me was already in thrall to this goddess, hanging on her every word, but part of me realized that she was focusing on me because she thought I had the best chance to resist her.

Good girl.

However, she clearly didn't know her own strength and when the Chosen One stopped distracting her the pressure on me redoubled.

I wanted to do anything to make my goddess happy, to make sure the twin suns of her eyes wouldn't glare down on me in fury. I wanted to throw myself on the ground in front of her, prostrate myself for her, just to make sure she would not be mad.

And then I heard the sound of someone snapping their finger, as loud as an explosion in this little world, and all the sounds and impressions stopped. Or rather they seemed to stop, because despite the lack of pain and pressure I still couldn't stand up from where I knelt.

Then a woman, just a woman, walked in front of me and it took my scrambled brain a moment to realize it was Syr, the girl who was sharing my mind. Her footsteps sounded deafeningly loud, clicking on the stone floor I could no longer see.

“I have insulated your mind from the worst of her spell”, she told me. “But her illusion is still locking up your muscles.”

So what do I do?, I asked. I couldn't open my mouth if I wanted to.

“You have to get up, walk over to her and stab her collar with a dispelling stiletto.”

Stab... my goddess?, I asked, shocked at the mere suggestion.

“Oh for fuck's sake”, she said, then walked over and slapped me.

Of course I knew she couldn't touch me, but even knowing she couldn't touch me and knowing my head didn't actually rock sideways didn't stop me from feeling a sharp, stinging pain radiating out from my cheek.

Then she walked off and waved her hand, creating faint outlines in my mind. The first was the shape of a thin knife laying on the... ground? But there was no ground, only an endless plane of stars with two suns glaring down at us. Then she created a second shape, a shape I recognized. It was the shape of my goddess, but she seemed so small and had only three tails, not nine. This was...

“Yume”, Syr said, gently. “Her name is Yume. She is not your goddess, she is your little fox.”

Little fox? What a blasphemous way to call... And then Syr flooded my head with images of her own, with pictures of my goddess, no, of Yume, writhing under me, yipping and panting as I forced myself inside her.

I... had violated my goddess?

Another set of pictures showed me biting Yume's throat, of holding her by the throat and squeezing.

I had made my goddess submit?

Then a third set of pictures showed me holding her close, her curled up like a fox next to me, her resting her head on my lap.

My goddess... trusted me?

“There”, Syr said. “That's who Yume is. That's what your relationship is like.”

But..., I began.

“Oh, by Frigg's puckered asshole”, she swore. “You're the Godsforsaken, Felix. You're the one who defies gods, not the one who bows and scrapes before them. And if you're not going to submit to a real goddess, why in Hel's name would you submit to a fake one?”

That jolted me out of my daze. That was right. I was the fucking Godsforsaken. I had a job to do. This was no goddess, this was my little fox, the girl I had tamed, and she needed my help to get away from the one who had control over her.

I got up.

Just three little words but they didn't do the act justice. The sheer act of going against the spell Yume had put me under was more exhausting than all the Qi techniques I'd used so far put together.

Getting up was the worst. Taking the first step was slightly easier. The second was easier than the first, the third easier than the second.

I wanted to grab the dispelling stiletto off the floor but I was worried about the Chosen One attacking me if I knelt down so instead I pulled another dispelling stiletto out of my bag of holding and walked over to the faint outline of my little fox, ignoring the twin suns above me. That construct was not Yume. I reached out and grabbed her by the back of the neck and felt her collar.

And then I stabbed the leather with my dispelling stiletto.

**

The illusion around me shattered with the sound of breaking glass and I was back in the throne room, the Chosen One staring at us as if he didn't know what I'd just done.

Then the leather collar dropped off Yume's neck and clattered on the ground, the metal clasp producing a disproportionately loud ringing sound as it hit the stone floor, as if the collar weighed more heavily on the world than its physical weight would explain.

“What have you done?”, the Chosen One breathed and Yume turned around to face him. “She'll kill us all. She's a dangerous animal that needs to be controlled.”

“Hello, Master”, she said, spitting out the word.

He backed off slowly but I knew it wouldn't do him any good. Yume could run circles around him if she wanted to. But so far she didn't. Instead she just took one step forward, following the Chosen One. His face was a grimace of barely contained terror and his eyes flickered to the Dark Lord as if hoping for his help, but the Dark Lord only stared at the display as though it was the best entertainment he'd gotten in months.

Then Yume blurred forward and only through my experience following her Qi techniques could I tell that she had used some sort of technique that had brought her face to face with him in the blink of an eye. Then she unleashed a barrage of strikes enhanced by Qi. The first was a stab with her rigid fingers that tore through his breastplate as if it were made of parchment. She curled her hand until she had wrapped it around the metal she'd just pierced a hole into and used another Qi Burst to tear the metal away like a bandage over a wound. Her hand jabbed forward again, this time tearing into his chest. I thought she was going to pierce his heart but clearly she had no intention of ending it quite so soon. Instead she only barely pierced the skin and this time grabbed hold of the ribs protecting his heart and, with yet another Qi Burst, ripped them out as well. The ribs snapped like dry wood and the flesh around them tore with spurts of blood. Then her hand jabbed out again, this time without a Qi technique, and wrapped around his exposed heart.

The attacks had all happened so fast that only now did it register to the Chosen One what she'd done. Her hand around his heart was all that was keeping him upright through the pain. He wanted to back off but he knew he'd leave his heart behind if he tore away from her.

“Don't”, he said. It had clearly been intended as a command but it came out as a whimper. “Don't kill me.”

“Listen to you, begging”, she said and her voice sounded at once cold as ice and as satisfied as I'd ever heard her. “Did you know I couldn't even do that under the influence of that collar? No matter what you asked me to do I couldn't even beg for you not to, couldn't even beg to be allowed to stop.”

“I-I-I never hurt you”, he said. “I was a kind master to you. I never struck you, never harmed you. I only made you please me.”

She tightened her grip a little and he squealed. “I am kitsune”, she told him in a growl. “I am wild and unfettered. I do not please. The only one I submit to is one who has earned my submission. You didn't earn my submission, you forced it. You forced me to please you, you forced your disgusting manhood into my mouth, you forced me to use my hands to touch your filthy body. You even forced me to lay back and not struggle so you could violate me.”

“But I didn't”, he said.

“That's right”, she said. “Even after forcing me not to resist you were too pathetic to take me.” And then she decided to twist the knife. “When Felix and I fell down that cliff he took me. He made me submit to him.” The Chosen One's eyes widened. “He didn't need a magical collar to do it, either.”

He shook his head. “He couldn't have”, he said. “I asked you. I asked if he forced himself on you and you told me no. You couldn't lie to me with that collar on.”

She chuckled. “That's right. I didn't lie to you”, she told him, then explained. “He didn't force himself on me. I forced myself on him the first time and the second time I begged him to take me. I begged him to breed me. And he obliged.”

Between the pain and what she just told him he slumped forward.

“Hey, don't give up yet, I want you to feel it when I'm killing you”, she said but he kept staring at the ground, or maybe at her arm reaching into his chest cavity.

Then she seemed to remember something and tore off his belt. It wasn't to get him naked or to humiliate him further, but to get his sword and his bag of holding away from him before she decided to end it.

“One more thing”, she said and he looked up at her, clearly knowing she was almost done with him. “If you had tried to violate me after he was done with me I wouldn't even have been able to feel you.” And then she killed him.

In an instant his entire body was wreathed in light blue fire. His greasy hair burned down to nothing as did his cloak. Next were his eyeballs, which popped like pimples from the heat, red boiling tears scalding their way down his cheeks. His skin turned pink and then a scent alarmingly like bacon permeated the area as it turned from pink to golden brown. When the heat was getting too much for her she jerked her hand back, tearing out his heart with one last Qi Burst, and his body fell backwards, still burning. She kept the fire spell up for another five seconds, her eyes never leaving his body. When she had finally extinguished the fire she dropped the heart on top of the charred corpse that had been her former master.

“Was it as good as you'd hoped?”, I asked her calmly.

She turned around slowly. Tears were streaking down her face and she gave me a radiant smile that showed off her long canines.

“Better.”