Vol.2 Ch.20 – Why Did It Have To Be…?

Chapter 20: Why Did It Have To Be...?

The sound of applause took our attention away from the Chosen One's charred corpse.

“Splendid!”, the Dark Lord said as he clapped. “Simply splendid entertainment. You were wonderfully ruthless, miss fox.”

“You seem to be a little too fine with us killing your ally”, Yume said as we were joined by Alisha and Selene. They'd been released from the spell at the same time as I was but had apparently not wanted to interrupt.

The Dark Lord gave an easy shrug. Or rather, his right shoulder gave an easy shrug while the twisted flesh of his left shoulder went through a contraction that looked as if it hurt.

“The way I see it, five heroes arrived in my throne room and now there are four heroes remaining”, he told us. “If I had interfered to help him it might have made you band together. So, would you consider leaving me alone or will we have to do this the hard way?”

Yume narrowed her eyes for a moment but then slowly walked over to where she had dropped the Chosen One's sheathed sword. She reached for it, never taking her eyes off the Dark Lord. When she had it the Dark Lord slowly raised his hand in a defensive gesture but then paused when she didn't charge at him. Instead she turned to me and presented the sword to me in an almost ceremonial way.

“I have earned this weapon by right of conquest by defeating its owner and I am now giving it to you as someone who has bested me in open combat”, she said, the words clipped and formal. “Do you accept this gift?”

“As the one who defeated you, I accept your gift to me”, I intoned just as formally before wrapping my hand around the hilt.

Despite our efforts I expected the familiar low buzzing of a legendary weapon that refused to accept me but instead the weapon hummed with power as my hand closed on it. Without needing to think I knew exactly how to use its fire enchantment and it seemed willing, eager even, to do my bidding.

I pulled the sword from its sheath and it was just as splendid as when I had seen before. It was a gladius, a leaf-shaped blade without a guard on it, fairly short as straight swords went but not so short as to be inconvenient, and very easy to swing. The sword was an off-white, almost ivory color that didn't belong to any metal I'd ever seen, but I knew it had to be made of some sort of metal because the mark of Hephaestus was acid-etched into the pommel and I had seen his mark often enough to recognize not just the mark but also its variations and this was definitely a variation of a metal weapon, though I couldn't tell at a glance what metal it was. Along the sides of the blade were more runes, but these glowed a dull orange and I knew that when swung or while using the fire enchantment they blazed bright. I saw a few dull spots on the blade and resolved to sharpen and polish the blade once we were done with this quest and the blade seemed to hum in approval.

“Did he ever mention if the sword had a name?”, I asked Yume as I experimentally swung the sword, the blade leaving behind a heat mirage as it swished through the air.

“Wrath's Fang”, she told me, slightly disgusted.

“Good”, I said, then told the sword: “Then from now on you're Helios Edge.”

The sword hummed its approval and Yume seemed surprised, but happy.

“Then why did you ask what he called it?”, she asked.

“So I could find another name”, I said. “You killed the man. I will help you kill his memory.”

She finally smiled. “Thank you”, she said.

“I feel I've been fairly polite thus far”, the Dark Lord said, reminding us that he was there. “But I can't help thinking that you aren't taking me seriously.”

I turned towards him and said: “I am taking you very seriously, which is why I wanted to make sure I had a proper weapon before I gave you your answer.” I turned to Selene and asked: “Could you cast your war horn miracle on us all?”

She nodded and did and when the enormous sound had subsided I told the Dark Lord:

“You consorted with Outsiders and you will die for it. But only after you tell us what we want to know.”

“Very well”, he said. “Then I shall fight not only for myself but also for the sake of the Holy Maiden.”

Then he raised an arm and the gate to the left of his throne opened. He was a beast master, someone who captured and enthralled wild beasts to fight for him, and as such he was fairly weak on his own. He needed his menagerie to help even the odds and apparently he'd kept some choice beasts around just in case. However, since beast masters were weak on their own it meant that if you could kill them before they could sic their beasts at you it was possible to cut the fight short.

So I tried the trick I'd come up with two nights ago, accelerating a thrown rock with a Qi Burst, except where before I had used a pebble the size of a fingernail this time I used the same technique to throw a rock as big as a goblin's skull. By my estimation this projectile should deal about half as much damage as a cannonball.

I raised the rock over my shoulder, focused my Qi and threw it at the Dark Lord. The rock traveled through the air almost too fast to follow, on course to hit him right in his smug face, and then there was a flash and the rock struck an invisible barrier wrapping around the Dark Lord, concentric ripples that traveled outward from the point of impact the only evidence I'd even hit him.

I'd read about these barriers. I'd even encountered someone using these before. They were a specialty of Necromancers which meant they were pretty rare, but that didn't make them any less annoying. It took catastrophic damage to tear apart one of these shields and it was absolutely impossible to do so while distracted by something else.

Speaking of being distracted by something else, out of the open gate stepped another one of those hydra with dragon heads, same as the one we'd encountered by Ymir's Scar.

“Seriously”, I said to the Dark Lord, not really expecting an answer, “how did you get your hands on two adolescent hydras?”

“I found the eggs while subjugating the group of giants I sent to Shackled Hollow”, he replied. “Apparently they killed the mother hydra but kept the eggs to raise them as pets. If you can kill it, maybe you'll deserve to fight me personally.”

“You're on”, I told him and turned to fully face the hydra. “How much more damage did it take to down the last one after Yume and I went flying?”, I asked Selene and Alisha.

“It only died when we removed all the heads and cauterized all the stumps”, Selene said.

“And the final head seemed to get stronger, can't forget that”, Alisha added.

“Right”, Selene said. “It suddenly hit a lot harder and we had to hack at it for a long time before it finally came off.”

“So I guess that's what the myth of the final head being immortal is about”, I muttered. “Yume, you can create fire. Can you extinguish it, too?”, I asked without turning around.

“I can, but I'm not very good at it”, she said.

“Got it, then we do it like last time”, I said. “Alisha, make sure its fire breath doesn't hit us, Yume, try to stun it so we can attack it and Selene, let's take it down. Yume and I will cauterize the stumps.”

And so we advanced on the second hydra in two weeks.

**

Our last fight against a hydra had been a hard-fought battle and if not for Alisha's timely intervention we would have suffered casualties from it. And that was with us having a fifth fighter in our party.

However, the situation was completely different from last time and I don't just mean the fact that there was no cliff for the hydra to shove us off of. The Chosen One was dead but I had his sword and with him dead Yume no longer had to pretend she wasn't as strong as she was. Even more, I now knew Qi techniques and Selene had gotten over her anger at Freya at least enough to use the miracles the goddess had granted her. The only one in our party who wasn't significantly stronger now than she had been the last time was Alisha and the elven priestess had never been anything less than formidable in the first place.

Both Selene and I dashed forward, but since I used a Qi technique to do it I left her well behind. The last time we'd done this I'd needed almost twice as many strikes to chop off a head as she did, but now I had a legendary weapon as well.

Between the magically enhanced sharpness and the momentum from the dash I managed to cut the head off in a single swing. Better yet, since Helios Edge got hotter the harder it was swung and I had swung it with quite a bit of force behind it, the blade managed to cauterize the wound even as it cut.

I heard the hydra let out pained squeals as I cut and then a moment later I heard a second head thump to the ground as Selene had managed to cut through the head she'd attacked as well. Selene and I jumped back as the hydra threw a tantrum and I had to block a flailing head with my sword. Yume was already holding a fireball, trying to wait for the perfect opportunity to throw it, and then it sailed through the air, hitting the stump where Selene had cut off the second head and cauterizing that wound as well. The thing went mad with pain and we backed off as I pulled out a tower shield and held it in front of me, my women behind me. The shield wouldn't hold out against a fire breath. It wouldn't even stop a concentrated attack of all three heads trying to bite us. But a pain-crazed beast flailing about? Yeah, the shield was just about good enough for that.

When the hydra calmed down a little it began to screech, but this time we knew that this particular screech was the prelude to its fire breath so Alisha began a working. Now that I had learned how to perceive Qi my ability to perceive Chi, err, I mean mana, had also been enhanced. Where before I had just seen a gray-green glow surrounding the heads this time I could tell she was creating spheres of air and then shoving them into the hydra's open maws, acting like the cork on a bottle and stopping the fire from coming out of their maws. The resulting force finally exploded outward in a bloom of heat that cooked the hydra's necks from the inside but did very little to us. We were pushed back a little but the effect had been nowhere near as volatile as it had last time. Even if we had fought near a cliff, nobody would have gone flying from it.

Thoroughly dazed from the backlash the hydra's heads dropped to the ground and that was when Yume struck with her Stupor spell. Apparently the hydra's final head would become stronger but I had no intention of letting that happen, so while Selene began hacking at the third head I positioned myself so that both of the others necks were directly in front of me, one behind the other like two enormous wooden logs laid side by side.

I raised Helios Edge above my head and began channeling Qi into it. I'd thought pushing Qi into my old sword had been effortless, but I had been wrong. Compared to this sword I'd had to fight my old sword every inch of the way, weaving around every imperfection in the blade. But with this weapon there were no imperfections and the blade just soaked up my Qi. At first I was worried the amount of Qi might damage this weapon despite its enchantments but then I felt some sort of resonance, as if the blade wasn't just not being damaged but actually thrived from the power I poured into it. The runes began glowing brighter than I had ever seen them and when I swung downward a massive orange arc followed the blade.

I had only used a simple Qi Projection to carve through both of the remaining necks simultaneously and that had certainly happened, but the sheer force of the eight foot long blade of solid heat was still astounding. It carved through the hydra's two remaining heads with the force of an angry god's glare and the meat on both sides of the cut sizzled as if perfectly cooked already.

Then Yume threw another fireball at the stump Selene had produced and with that, the hydra was dead, all five heads cut off and all of the stumps cauterized.

When I looked at Helios Edge I noticed that now, even without me swinging it, the runes glowed brighter, as though the blade's energy reservoir had been almost empty before I got my hands on it and it was now full again. The sword seemed to hum in approval. Yes, this would do nicely. A blade that could not just withstand my Qi abilities but that actually gained something from having me channel through it.

I turned back around to see the Dark Lord, whose face had lost some of the smugness after we killed his hydra without a single one of us getting so much as a scratch. Without turning around I said: “Yume, could you please shove or kick or punch the dead hydra into a corner? I don't want to have to dance around it all the time while we're fighting him.”

“Of course”, Yume replied and then I heard her wooden sandals clack for a few steps before an inhale and a loud whoomp. Next I heard the hydra's massive body skidding across the floor.

Then, as one, we advanced on the Dark Lord.

He rose up from his throne calmly. His jovial demeanor had evaporated and his good mood was gone as well. That wasn't to say he looked angry or unhinged, the Dark Lord was merely focused, as if we had finally proven that he had to take us seriously.

He threw his arms wide and began an incantation, clearly of a miracle. The moment he opened his mouth we threw air lances, fireballs and rocks sped up by Qi Burst at him, but his annoying shield bubble stopped everything. The ripples were taking longer to disperse now, telling me that we had done more than negligible damage to it, but we hadn't managed to stop his incantation. He finished his little prayer to the Black Goat with:

“Black Sun!”

Immediately a sphere of roiling not-light appeared above his right arm, outside of his shield, and it sucked in the light, leaving only gloom in its place.

“Darklight”, I told my women. “Avoid getting hit by that at all costs.”

Easier said than done because I didn't even know what he had planned for that sphere. I doubted it was just a projectile, if only by the size. The sphere was the size of a pumpkin.

And then I found out what the sphere was supposed to do. Honestly, the name should have been a giveaway.

Astrologers had studied our sun for quite some time and learned that it was more than just a glowing ball in the sky. It was clearly a roiling mass of heated matter and it was also apparently quite volatile, with a tendency to create enormous burning arcs that pulsed outward. And that's what this Black Sun did. A large arc of energy lashed out, intending to cleave through us. Yume and I turned as one. She grabbed Alisha and used a Qi Dash to get them both out of the way, I did the same with Selene. The wave of Darklight hit the space we had just occupied and as it hit the ground it burned through that with no effort, leaving rime-coated burned holes left in its wake. I had no idea how it could simultaneously burn and freeze, but I did know that I didn't want to get hit by anything that could do that.

But the way the Black Sun absorbed light gave me an idea. What if I could overload it? But to do that I would need to get close enough to hit it, didn't I? No, I didn't. I grinned and began forming the most complex Qi working I had ever used. Helios Edge had an enchantment that allowed thrusting attacks to create waves of intense heat. It required a certain trigger to use, but as the weapon had acknowledged me as its wielder the knowledge of how to do it was written into my mind. I also had Qi Burst, which could amplify the force with which an attack hit and Qi Projection, which could shift a weapon's area of effect in otherwise impossible ways.

And so I combined all three. I pushed rivers of Qi into the blade and thrust forward. The actual fire lance was blindingly white-hot and struck the Dark Lord right in the shield. At the exact same time a second fire lance, created by Qi Projection, appeared in the air above the Black Sun and thrust down into it. This method for projection was in large parts inspired by the Black Goat's tentacle portals, but my application felt much more sophisticated. I wasn't rending space-time to gain my desired effect, I was projecting outward my own life force to strike twice instead of once.

The attack had worked, but it hadn't been quite enough. The Dark Lord's shield was wavering but not yet destroyed and the Black Sun was growing unstable but hadn't yet been dispersed. But Yume had clearly been inspired by what she saw.

She used her Qi to dash right behind the Dark Lord and then used an enormous Qi Burst, far more powerful than anything I could use, and struck the Dark Lord's shield from behind with a mighty open-palm strike. The force of impact was like a thunderclap and the Dark Lord and his little shield bubble went flying, straight into the Black Sun.

The Darklight construct attacked the shield bubble just as aggressively as it attacked anything else while the shield tried futilely to protect against something that nothing offered protection against. The shield was shredded and the Dark Lord, now unprotected, hurtled into his own ball of destruction. I thought that was the end but he had enough presence of mind to dismiss his miracle before it could shred through him, but not before it could bore an inch-deep hole into his skull. He fell to the ground and skidded to a halt but before he could rise up Selene cast her ice storm miracle on him and Alisha bombarded him with air lances that accumulated enough of the ice from Selene's miracle to become jagged frost lances that tore into his flesh.

It took a while for the ice storm to subside. By the time it was done he was riddled with holes and what little of his body wasn't bleeding or missing was frostbitten. I thought this might have been the easiest fight against a Dark Lord I'd ever had but then he croaked out:

“Unfettered Growth.”

If I had harbored any doubts that he was a Dark Lord of Shub-Niggurath they evaporated the moment that miracle took effect. With absolutely impossible speed red tumorous growths appeared all over his body and started swelling until there was a mass of them about five times the size of the Dark Lord's body. At first I wondered how turning himself into a giant ball of twisted flesh could possibly help until I realized what it reminded me of. A cocoon. A red, fleshy, pulsing chrysalis. And I had no interest in finding out what demented version of a beautiful butterfly would come out of it.

“Burn it!”, I screamed. “Kill it with fire!”

Yume bombarded it with fireballs and Alisha used her air magic not to stab but to provide air to the flames, fanning them on. I placed several fire lances into the cocoon, but none of it seemed to do much but char the surface.

Finally, when the fires had died down, Selene charged in and delivered an enormous overhead slash.

When I saw her blade sink into the cocoon I felt relieved at first but then I noticed that the tear seemed too controlled, as if whatever was inside it was about to hatch. Even worse, a vile-looking yellow liquid came hissing out of the wound and I activated a Qi Dash and shoved Selene out of the way.

As I had suspected, the liquid had been acid. Had I not shoved her out of the way it would have hit her right in her beautiful face. As it was, it hit me across the right shoulder blade and I screamed in pain. I dug frantically in my bag of holding for something to neutralize the acid and when I found it I shoved it into Selene's hand and she dutifully poured it over the wound. When I could no longer feel the acid eating its way through my flesh and bones I felt Alisha cast her healing miracle and just seconds later my shoulder felt whole again.

Unfortunately, that little distraction had given the beast inside the cocoon all the time it needed to hatch.

I had expected some twisted atrocity made of cancerous flesh. I had feared that the miracle might have turned him into a Blessed of Shub-Niggurath, vile creatures that looked like satyrs if you didn't look too closely and that were utterly immortal. Instead what stepped out of that cocoon was surprisingly similar to what the Dark Lord had looked like before. His skin was paler than before, as if the acid inside the cocoon had bleached his skin, and he looked to be a few inches taller. He still had the one scythed claw for a hand on his left and the perfectly human arm on the right. He even still had the surprisingly handsome face. But the rest?

The armor was gone. Well, not gone exactly, but where before he had an ornate armor set covering his right arm and his legs he now had chitinous armor that looked as if it was part of his body, red and glossy, slightly darker than the cocoon he'd stepped out of. His eyes were now goat-like, which made them look horribly out of place in his handsome face. Most importantly, the fucker actually had butterfly wings. Well, butterfly wings if butterflies were demented worshipers of the Black Goat in the Woods with a Thousand Young. The overall shape was very much reminiscent of butterfly wings, but instead of the rigid material of insect wings they were made of some sort of fluttery membrane not unlike those of the Jabberwocks. The wings were the soft pink of an untouched pussy and as they beat lightly at the air they spread an all too familiar scent, the heady aroma of a woman in ecstasy, which was beyond gross in this situation.

“I really didn't want to use that miracle just yet”, he told us. “But I have to admit this new flesh feels rather rapturous.”

Then he waved his hand and the gate to the other side of his throne opened. I was expecting another hydra or maybe more messed up creatures of the Black Goat, but instead the beings that emerged were...

“Oh come the fuck on”, I whined as a pack of barghests ghosted out of the monster den.

“You don't seem to like my pets very much”, the Dark Lord said, sounding slightly offended.

I briefly wondered why a pack of barghests would be alright with a worshiper of the Black Goat, but then I noticed that they weren't normal barghests. Where real barghests were limned in green foxfire, these barghests blurred a sickly yellow and they had goat eyes instead of wolf eyes. More experiments with the red milk then, I guessed. I was really starting to hate that stuff. Barghests were annoying enough already.

While I was still reeling from having yet more semi-corporeal enemies to fight the Dark Lord made his move. I don't know whether he thought she was the weakest link or whether he was most scared of her but either way he went for Yume. He kicked off the ground, the motion way too quick for a human but thankfully still slower than a dash assisted by Qi, and blurred towards the cute fox girl, his scythe arm swinging.

Yume got her arm between her body and the Dark Lord's scythe and I fully expected her arm to go flying off, but then there was an explosion of Qi and the scythe glanced off her arm, not even leaving a scratch. How had she done that?

Oh right, Qi Hardening.

While the Dark Lord was still reeling from having his attack deflected Yume struck him with an open palm square in the chest and he sailed off, the sound of cracking ribs echoing.

And then the barghests were on us.

Selene and I both pulled out shields to bounce the beasts off while Alisha stood behind us, trying to create a sacred circle.

Sacred circles were one of the more obscure abilities clerics had access to. If a cleric inscribed a circle on the ground and then fueled it with will they could create a blessed area. This area was impossible for spirit creatures to cross and half-corporeal creatures like barghests suffered bone-deep burns if they tried to enter it. Curses cast on people standing within a sacred circle would be unable to find a target and those who were already cursed could find respite in a sacred circle. Even more convenient, cloth, water and weapons left inside a sacred circle for a certain amount of time would be blessed without the cleric having to actively go and bless them, which meant most chapels had a small storage space with a sacred circle carved into the floor for just that convenience.

Unfortunately drawing a sacred circle took time and so we had to protect Alisha until she was finished.

The first barghest that tried to slam itself into my shield died a moment later when I stabbed its reeling body with Helios Edge. And then I remembered something.

Yume had been able to harm a dire wolf with a Qi attack despite them being immune to magic because Qi was life force and thereby something else entirely. So if barghests were immune to physical attacks specifically, wouldn't that mean that Qi might be able to hurt them as well?

I pulled Qi into my sword and used a simple Qi Projection on a horizontal slash. No fancy tricks with the fire enchantment or anything, just a projected slash that cleaved through three barghests. To my astonishment the Qi technique bit into their ghost flesh the same way magic would have, completely bypassing their physical immunity, and they dropped to the ground, suddenly wholly solid the way they always ended up when they died.

I knew I could have killed all of the barghests with Qi techniques but then I would have been close to collapsing afterwards and I couldn't afford that with a Dark Lord breathing down our necks.

Speaking of the Dark Lord, he had caught himself and his previously dented ribcage looked perfectly normal again. He had stared in shock as his barghests had died to my technique but then he caught himself and blurred forward again, this time toward Alisha.

I intercepted him, blocking his scythe with my sword. Good gods he was strong. Strong enough to overpower me if he kept pushing. I was about to pull Qi into my arms to wrest him off me but then Selene swung her blade at his exposed back. It bit deeply into his butterfly wings and then went on to carve a red line two inches deep into his back. The added force from Selene's slash almost made me stumble backwards but I pushed back with all my might and the Dark Lord had no choice but to twist away lest he be crushed between the two of us. As he twisted away he nicked Selene's shoulder with his scythe blade, hitting right between her armor panels. I didn't know whether it had just been a fluke or if he was just that good but I really hoped it had been the former.

I wanted to take advantage of the opening he had given me but one of the barghests jumped in front of us. I only barely managed to raise my sword in time but I needn't have bothered. Selene used the arm the Dark Lord hadn't just damaged and punched the barghest right in the snout. The skin contact immediately solidified the beast and her punch enhanced by her war horn miracle shattered the poor thing's muzzle.

While it was still reeling on the ground I cut through its neck.

I wanted to dig through my bag of holding for a healing potion but then I heard Alisha chanting her minor healing miracle, the one that didn't come out of her allotment for the day, and knew she had it, so instead of searching for a potion I dashed toward the Dark Lord, putting him on the defensive and trusting Yume to keep the barghests off my back.

I locked blades with the Dark Lord. I knew he could overpower me but that just meant I needed to make sure not to give him an even fight. Syr had been right. I was a rogue, not a fighter. And just because I couldn't match my opponent's strength didn't mean I couldn't kill him.

The Dark Lord tried to bear down on me, using his superior strength, but I pulled away and tried to hack at his overextended limb. He jerked away at the very last second but the twisted flesh that connected the scythe blade to his shoulder had taken a hit.

“Felix, back!”, Alisha shouted a moment before Selene's voice rang out:

“Icicle Crash!”

I'd seen that one in action and had no interest in being in its line of fire so I used a Qi Dash to get out of the way.

Several barghests had been in the line of fire and were buried under magically conjured ice that they couldn't just shrug off. The Dark Lord weathered a few of the icicles but then tried to dash out of the way. I used Qi Burst to throw a rock at him that knocked the wind out of him and kept him squarely in the miracle's area of effect. A few seconds later the miracle had passed him, going on to bury another two barghests, but Yume had no intention of letting the Dark Lord catch his breath.

She used the technique she had demonstrated for me before. She focused her Qi and then...

“Haa...”, she let out her breath and began a series of punches into the Dark Lord's center mass.

After being nearly buried under heavy ice spears the first few punches probably felt like a massage by comparison so he didn't even try to evade them but soon her fists began glowing and with my newfound Qi sight I could see she wasn't just punching random spots on his body. She was sending minuscule bursts of Qi into him that made his muscles lock up and spasm randomly, keeping him from defending himself or running away from her. Soon her fists were so bright it hurt to look at them and the Dark Lord rocked back with every hit, except the hits came so frequently that he was just constantly bent backwards and then, when it seemed like she was about to reach some sort of breaking point, her left hand shot out and grabbed the Dark Lord by the throat, her fingers sinking several inches into his flesh and then she gathered all the accumulated power into her right fist and began yelling:

“Hokuto Hundred Fist Ru---”

“Wait!”, I screamed. “We still need information!”

Reluctantly Yume dropped her fist and I was about to walk over to the Dark Lord and hold a blade to his throat to tell us what we wanted to know or else but just then a tentacle shot out of the canker on his chest and swiped at Yume. It seemed to be a feeble slap but when it hit her in the chest it slashed through her flesh as if it was a hot knife cutting through butter.

I dashed forward and threw a fire lance at the canker and then grabbed Yume and dashed to safety where Alisha immediately began casting her healing miracle, the proper healing miracle this time.

While I was grabbing Yume Selene decided to disarm the Dark Lord, except that my beautiful blond paladin clearly used a very literal definition of the term in that she threw a mighty overhead slash at the Dark Lord's left arm that carved off the twisted flesh that held the scythe blade entirely. Then she danced out of the way when another tentacle whipped out of his canker at her.

From the way his butterfly wings were already whole again after having been sliced to ribbons I didn't trust the dismemberment to last long so I jumped in and slashed along the torn flesh, the super-heated blade cauterizing the wound. Then I kicked the scythe arm into a corner for good measure before grabbing him by his right wrist and throwing him in the direction of Alisha's sacred circle.

He hit the circle the same way a fly hits a window. To him the circle was solid and impassable and according to Alisha his face looked quite ridiculous, squished up against a barrier none of us could feel.

By that point Yume was healed again though her garment was in tatters and only a hastily applied chest wrap kept her modesty intact and she used her regained mobility to cast a fireball that she pressed against the Dark Lord's chest until all the tentacles hiding inside that canker had either been burned off or scared into submission.

I slowly walked over to him and stabbed Helios Edge into the floor right next to him, showing him that I was not going to use it but was keeping it close in case he tried something.

“Are you going to tell us what we want to know?”, I asked him. “Or do you need some more encouragement?”

He coughed up blood and answered in a raspy voice: “Ask your questions and then end me, please.” Clearly when Yume had grabbed his throat she had damaged something inside it with how his voice sounded now.

“Where is your Holy Maiden now and what is she planning?”

He tried to chuckle but it turned into a series of pained coughs. “I have no idea where she is”, he said. “She travels a lot so that the unbelievers can't find her. Whenever I met her it was on neutral ground, always somewhere different. As for her plan? She wants to open the gates for Her, for our Dark Mother.”

“So I've gathered”, I said. “But how is she going to do that?”

He tried shrugging but his body clearly wasn't cooperating anymore. “I was going to help her by doing research on creating hybrids, on controlling creatures by adding tissue of the Dark Mother to them”, he said. “She is very interested in seeing how and what can be subjugated with the milk and the growths. What she wants that for, I don't know. She didn't exactly share much with me.”

I glared at him.

“Torture me if it makes you feel better, but I can't tell you what I don't know.”

“Alright”, I said. “Anything else you can tell us?”

“Well...”, he hedged. “This is just conjecture, but during our last meeting I had the impression that she is considering working together with a god of this world.”

I frowned. That would pretty bad if it were true. “Any idea which god?”, I asked.

“None”, he said.

“Alright, then one last thing”, I said. “Does your Holy Maiden have a name? What does she go by when she doesn't use her title?”

“I don't know about a name she goes by. She once mentioned that she used to be called Syr, but apparently she does not wish to use that name anymore.”

I don't know what kind of expression the Dark Lord saw on my face, but it terrified him. As a reward for answering all my questions I killed him quickly but whatever he'd seen had kept his face a grimace of fear all the way to the end.