The Ruler of Ruin

“Get us out of here!” Blaise demanded.

“Ya think?” Claire quipped sarcastically at the big man, and after moment that felt entirely too long mists rose around us faster than any time yet, but I could see Claire physically wilt under the strain it took to brute force the mists.

“In the fog of deepest fear, thick and sightless, drawing near,

Paths once straight now twist and wind, ensnaring every troubled mind.

Beware the fog, the elders say, lest you too become the prey.

In the gloom, the shadows bide, hungering for the next to die.”

The whispers drew in from every direction, a chorus of the voice of children. The faces of little five- and six-year-old human children played through my mind. Their skin held a pallor not seen in the healthy. The children’s blood-shot eyes leaked a dismal viscous liquid, a black ooze similar to what the Decaylings possessed. Sinister red lips were stained deep crimson, and the youngling’s pointed, predatory teeth still had hunks of flesh caught between them from their last meal.

With each thunderous beat of my heart, I could feel the cursed little ones drew closer to us. I could feel their raw hunger focus on us, their desperate need to consume to maintain their own lives. Instinctively, I knew that the feeding process would be painful, and lethal, and that I had no way to defend myself.

“Walk you idiots! Leave no one behind!” Blaise commanded the Dustwalkers, and Dad and Remy each grasped me with a hand, dragging me between them, even though the mists clutched onto me like an alchemist’s adhesive. The mists grasped at me, my skin felt like it might rip from the conflicting forces exerted upon me, and then all resistance fell away in a burst of red energy, and I could move my limbs again.

When the mists descended we stood on a vast plain. I couldn’t see anything higher than rodent mounds on the horizon in any direction. It felt disorienting in a way I couldn’t explain not to see towns, forests, mountains, anything on the horizon. Flatness everywhere, no matter where you looked. The only trees visible were wind swept misshapen things, and the vast blue sky seemed like it might collapse at any moment.

“Fucking fuck! That was a Psyghast!” Claire screeched at Blaise.

“We shouldn’t be any where near territories with Psyghasts, or any other Abomination bullshit, and if we’re that far off course you need to get us back on track.”

I didn’t like it. From the way the other Dustwalkers were staring suspiciously at the ground and sky, I wasn’t the only one.

“Should we break out the Elixir of Finding the Alchemists provided us?” Blaise asked Claire bluntly, and the scout scrunched her face up before she answered after taking a few deep breaths.

“No!” Claire answered empathetically. “Give me one more Veil. If we haven’t hit it on the fifth Veil we can use them. The potions are too valuable to waste if we don’t need to, and we can use them for another job, or sell them, if we don’t use them. There are more than a few groups who’d pay exorbitantly for a Potion of Finding to the Pyrite Hills.” Claire’s pride buried itself in business acumen, it seemed like. I could tell she saw using the potions as a failure, their costs were just a convenient excuse to try again on her own. Was she always this prideful? I didn’t remember her being like this.

“Fine, one more try. What’s throwing us off?” Blaise asked rhetorically, not expecting an answer. I didn’t expect Claire to answer him, and especially not in a voice loud enough for the rest of us to overhear.

“Something keeps trying to grab at us and push us off course. I’ve easily overpowered its destination each time, but it’s persistent and keeps screwing up our crossing at the very last minute.” Claire scowled at the ground and kicked a rodent mound.

“It? You think it’s the Mists?” Blaise laughed. “You Mistwalkers are all crazy. The mists aren’t alive.”

“There’s a lot worse things in the Mists that can control it than Mistwalkers,” Claire reminded Blaise with a glare. “I don’t know what it is. I do know that I’ve been able to overcome its grabby hands, but that doesn’t mean it can’t hurt us. Look, you yellows might survive something that can best me, but no way any of us red or oranges would.”

“Relax, Claire. Slip the pull on the next Veil, then get us where we need to go. Everyone drinks up, hit the latrine, we move out in five.” Blaise ordered.

“Slip the pull,” Claire muttered mockingly at Blaise’s back, then grimaced when she noticed I was watching her. I grinned. She scowled, her cheeks flushing a red, and then Claire stalked angrily around a tree. I assumed she had to pee.

I felt a surge of satisfaction when we left the prairie behind. Any more time there and it felt like the flatness would attack us. How that might happen, I don’t know, but that was the impression I picked up. Everything in the Mists could potentially be a foe, even the environments, which really drove home that Claire had become a very skilled Mistwalker. Without a Mistwalker, every Veil crossing was said to be rife with danger and violence, a fatality waiting to happen. So far we’d only been truly attacked once, and the only real injuries were my own.

When the mists fell again, the Prairie had been replaced by foothills, and on the horizon, mountains. We didn’t even take a break, Blaise motioned for the party to keep on trudging, and when the mists fully broke for the fifth Veil, it looked exactly like the illusion Glint had shown off outside Havenstone. Even from a distance, the smell of the kobolds refuse assaulted my nose with a ferocity that made me wonder what the kobolds ate for their waste to smell quite so vile.

“Good job, Claire,” Blaise praised the scout even as he unlimbered the two-handed great sword from his back and rolled his shoulders. The Dustwalkers all moved in to form a semi-circle, except Claire who slipped into the brush and vanished after harumphing at Blaise.

“Claire’s killing the lookouts. Once that’s done and she comes back, I want Remy and Glint to form the box. Hem them in on three sides, funnel them into the meat grinder. Marius, Alaine, when those two have the box complete you’re in charging of killing them. Remember, we need the scales, and the head alchemist offered a bonus for their livers. Waste not want not.” Blaise didn’t seem that interested, he even sounded bored. No, bored was not the right word, he sounded like a butcher who had spent years in the slaughterhouse, or a blacksmith complaining about the mandated order of nails that the King required from them. Blaise exuded the calm practicality of a veteran adventurer, numb to the everything but profit.

The day turned out to be a total bloodbath. Illusory walls and rolling balls of magma forced the kobolds to evacuate their homes and since they were blocked in on three sides their only route to safety lay through the main body of the Dustwalkers. Kobolds are weak creatures, even I could overpower two at a time, and I didn’t have the enhanced strength, speed, or magic of the adventurers. The dying screams of kobolds filled my mind, and I hid behind a tree. The solid trunk and thick bark did very little to block out the gargled pleas for mercy. That’s what I heard, but the Dustwalkers struck them down without mercy, and many with glee or a mirthful chuckle.

The Church of Mithras, the Horizon Guardians, and the Adventurers Guild all took the stance that mist creatures were inhuman, driven only by desires of violence towards Solarias, and existed solely to destroy Castles and take the peace our ancestors had built.

I don’t know about all of that, but I do know that the bigger kobolds tried to help the smaller ones escape the slaughter at the cost of their own lives, and after I realized that I hid and tried to block out the slaughter. The twelve adventurers purged the sixty strong Libraescale tribe in short order. The bulk of the kobolds had died in the first five minutes. After that Blaise and one of the men I didn’t know spent about twenty minutes searching the village, finishing off any hiders, then Claire took a half hour to ensure there were no more to hunt here.

“Want to hold my bag for me?” Claire’s voice pulled my eyes open. She’d walked around the tree and stared straight at me, her storage bag already opened and activated. She didn’t have any blood on her, perhaps because she’d stuck to using the bow on her back, rather than the short swords on her hip.

“Is it always like… that?” I asked while standing. I could hold the bag for her, her mana had activated it, and if it didn’t require more mana, it was perfectly safe for me to hold. It would still use her mana to store an item, but I could hold it. I was as useful as a post, at least. Finally, my grand chance to impress Blaise had arrived.

“No, no it isn’t. The Kobolds are weak, weaker than almost anything we usually hunt. The Alchemists really wanted their scales though. They offered Blaise a good deal for supplies going forward if we did this for them. We’re one of the only parties that knows about the Pyrite Hills, and every other group that works Libraescale harvests only brings back a few dozen pounds at a time. Stumbling into hunting grounds like this, then being able to side-step into where the kobolds haven’t been killed yet is lucrative.”

“Side-step?” I wasn’t familiar with the way she used the term.

“Oh, we aren’t done yet, Em. We aren’t done until everyone’s bags are full of scales, and then that sweet Potion and Elixir discount will be all ours. It’s messy work, sure, but the pay will be amazing. Those of us who get a Full Share will be able to afford a manor in the midlands after this.” Claire grinned; I could almost see coins reflected in her eyes, but I saw through the ruse. She was trying to psyche herself up about this mission. No matter how lucrative Libraescales were, they weren’t that lucrative. The discount from the alchemist’s guild, though, was a highly sought after reward, and one they rarely offered.

“You didn’t say what a side-step is?” I pressed, more interested in the Mistwalker turn of phrase than the slaughter of kobolds.

“Oh, it’s a common enough thing. You change something about the mists you’re in, but otherwise keep it the same. So, we step through the mists without going to another actual Veil, and instead shift to another version of this Veil in the mists, where the kobolds are still alive. You’ve never heard about Side-steps?”

“I’ve never heard of it,” I confirmed, a little annoyed she thought I’d ask if I knew.

“Well, only a skilled Mistwalker can do it, like me.” Claire bragged and pounded her hand against her chest. She then winced, having forgotten her harvesting dagger had a ball at the end of the hilt, and she hit herself in the chest with it. A few years ago, I would have joked about even her dagger being obsessed by her breasts, but we weren’t close anymore, and I didn’t want her thinking I’d been harboring a crush over her all this time, so I just grinned at her clumsiness.

“So, how many other Mistwalkers in Havenstone can do the Slip-step thing?” I inquired. My gift of allowing her to brag in answer to the question as a balm to her bruised ego countered my deliberate misnaming of her technique. I hoped.

“None of them can. I’m the only one in Havenstone,” Claire bragged happily, but frowned when she had to move to the next corpse to restart the butchering of the kobolds. I couldn’t bring myself to look too close at the livers she fished out of the tiny reptile men.

“And as long as you envision it right, and override the rest of the party, you’ll just repeat this slaughter until you’ve got enough monster corpses? That’s not as heroic as I imagined adventuring.” My face must not have concealed my disapproval, or disgust at what they’d done.

“You’re handling being out here better than most newbie adventurers, let alone observers. Aren’t you afraid of getting lost, or the monsters?” Claire changed the topic on me. Did I let a little too much disapproval slip, or did she feel the same way and not want to talk about it?

“I’ve dreamed about this for as long as I can remember, Clairebear. Dad and Uncle Remy are powerful mages, Blaise supposedly is the strongest man around, and the rest of the Dustwalkers are no slouches, besides you, so what do I have to be afraid of?” I grinned, but she shook her head quickly. She didn’t even snap at me for calling her Clairebear. She used to hate that name.

“Don’t jinx it, Em.” After that, awkward silence ruled until the clean-up was done, and we fell back into formation. We only walked about a hundred feet, and the mists rose to surround us and then fell quickly. We were in a very, very similar place to the last one. The air smelled the same, the kobolds looked the same, for all I could tell we just traveled back in time before the slaughter.

“Second verse, same as the first,” Blaise sing song commanded, and the Dustwalkers fell into their preassigned roles for the extermination of the kobolds. I found the big tree to hide behind, so I wouldn’t have to watch.

“Come on kiddo, let me show you how we use harvesting blades. You’ll deal with them a lot working for the Quartermaster.” Dad nudged me from my half-trance sometime later, so I trudged after him to learn how to descale kobolds. It’s terrible work, especially if you can’t channel mana into a knife to activate the sharpness enchantment.

After I harvested two, Uncle Remy swapped out with me and tossed me a canteen with a fruity water inside. “Drink up, dehydration can sneak up on you.”

I lay in the grass and stared up at the sun. It was strange to me that Mithras covered the Mists, but what if it wasn’t Mithras up there, but another sun? Mithras usually had a vibrant orange coloration, whereas the Mithras-like up there now seemed more yellow, and the black sun rising on the horizon behind the mountains was just creepy as hell.

Black Sun?

“Oh shit! Corvusol!” I cried the name of the Black Sun out in fear, and eyes all jumped to me, and then scanned the sky. It wasn’t hard to find Corvusol, looking like a massive orb of darkness eagerly waiting to consume everyone and everything. It was the Sun of Death, the Ill Omen, the evil sibling of Mithras. I watched in horror as two purple eyes manifested on Corvusol, and they looked right at me.

Lost lamb, do you need a guiding hand? A voice, all wispy and distorted, spoke into my mind.

In service to Corvusol you will learn to make the impossible possible and wield the raw forces of destruction. I control the darkness that consumes stars. Become my Architect for a grand new order and cast your enemies into oblivion.

It was in my head. Corvusol, the darkest of all bad omens, whose mere flicker in the sky spelled the deaths of untold adventurers and knights, whose servants destroyed Castles spoke directly into my head. Would the Dustwalkers turn on me if I admitted it? This wasn’t some mist-monster, but an evil god.

Enkindler or not, you are a wretched blank. The only service you could provide me is your death. The cold, calculating male voice seemed so far away, but instinctively I knew who it belonged to. Mithras, Lord of Light, Master of the Sacred Flame, Savior of Humanity, God. The Academy and Guilds taught that Castles could only be built through the blessing and cooperation of Mithras. Kill yourself and save me the trouble.

Mithras wanted me to die. Fantastic.

A cacophony of voices rose up, dozens of different entities talking directly into my mind at once. Yet they faded out like someone had turned the volume down on them, and one voice spoke into the serene quiet.

Corvusol isn’t your only option, young dreamer. He and Mithras see only their ridiculous plots against one another. You’ve dreamed of building Castles your whole life, but what if I told you there was a better option? Why settle for a Castle when you can become a Fortress?

The third voice belonged to a woman, I think, but all that came to my mind when she spoke was a spinning diamond, while Corvusol made me think of the Black Sun, and Mithras made me envision the silver-orange sun. The jumble of voices had filled my mind with different images, mostly humanoid. What difference was there between suns, crystals, and people? How could they all talk to me?

“Fall in, we’re going home!” Blaise commanded the Dustwalkers. “Claire, drink the Potion of Return and aim for getting us home in a single Veil.”

Blaise didn’t sound like a man afraid for his life, which struck me as odd. He sounded annoyed, as if he were dodging an acquaintance or an annoying relative, instead of the damned Black Sun. I couldn’t figure out where he found his courage. My hands shook and the hair on the back of my neck stood up in terror at the Black Sun looking down on me, and that was before I factored in the voices in my head.

I had caught some form of Mist madness, that was the only rational explanation. Probably from exposure to the Decaylings? Benevolent Mithras wouldn’t cast me out to die, he would shelter me in his light, as he did all children of man. Corvusol wouldn’t offer me power, he would destroy me as a follower of Mithras, and those other voices, whatever they were, weren’t real. Clearly, this was a fever dream. What should I do? I couldn’t tell Dad that I hallucinated Corvusol talking to me. Anyone who overheard it might strike me down without a second thought.

“Let’s go, Emery.” Dad pat my shoulder, gave me a comforting squeeze, and nudged me to fall in between him and Uncle Remy. He mistook my despair for fear of Corvusol, but he didn’t seem concerned about the Black Sun at all. None of the older Dustwalkers did, while Claire, the two other younger members of the party, and I, all seemed on the edge of full panic.