Much can be said about the religions of Traisil. Most of the important events happen in the Auburia Evaries – or ‘Birthplace of the first Elves’ – but there are many other continents. Each have different interpretations of the mythology that is – ostensibly – fact. I should know, considering I am a part of it. There’s always something a little bit off about each version of the mythology as told by religious scholars. Some believe that I am a big floating eye, some believe that I don’t exist, others think that I died in the belly of a sea-serpent millennia ago. In the end, it all comes down to what perspective the events are told from. Unfortunately, there is no official church that looks at things from my perspective. If there was, that would probably be the most objective one. I see everything that’s happened and everything that will happen, all at the same time. It makes focusing on something a tad difficult sometimes, but the pros far outweigh the cons.

  In truth, everyone believes their own version of events to be right. Artoris believes Alen to be the villain and vice versa. The Church of Alen however, has taken religion and twisted it to be an instrument of subjugation. Its influence has spread all across the world, toppling kingdoms and driving wise men mad. They have destroyed so much culture, killed countless innocents, all in the name of a god that – trust me – would kill them all in an instant if it scratched the eternal itch on his left butt-cheek. From my perspective, they are the true villains of the story. Now, Alen and Artoris are no sweethearts – few of the gods are – but their involvement in the story is less direct and more guiding. They act – for now – as whisperings in the ears of the true players of this game.

  Back to the church. Their presence throughout Hegrines is mostly concentrated around Nyth’Aren and Krilm, with Nyth’Aren being home to the Elvish order, and Krilm to the Human brotherhood. Both were responsible for hunting down Elion – in fact, it was the only thing they could find a common ground on. The dark heir had to die, the bearer of the Tether was too dangerous for the Church.

  At times I pitied the poor fools, especially when I looked at the group of five walking around, casually chatting amongst each other. I could see their future, their potential – both the parts they would live up to and the parts they would choose to abandon.

  It would be a few days walking to Nyth’Aren, a journey they chose to enjoy instead of dread. Every step they took was one more opportunity to joke, or to gossip, or – for some – to flirt. Nothing remarkable or exciting happened until the third day, when they stumbled upon a small village that none of them recognised, and that none of them had ever seen drawn on a map. There wasn’t necessarily a macabre reason for this, it was just a very young village. What was rather macabre was the silence. Not a single sound came from any of the homes or shops.

  As the five walked onto what looked like the main road of the village, a shiver went up each of their spines. Even Tallioth, who was not easily frightened by mundane threats, felt the metaphorical hairs on his neck stand up. Only Randan and Elion recognised the strange sensation that filled their bodies and clouded their minds.

  “Aly, this is like the farmhouse,” Elion warned. “Make sure you don’t get overtaken by it.” Aly scoffed, but nodded. Elion’s support the night before had stifled some of the tension between them, but she didn’t remember much beside him being there while she expunged half a bucket of mead and bile from a stomach. The only thing Elion had felt in that moment was admiration of her stomach volume and gratitude for the bucket that – miraculously – did not leak one bit.

  Elion wasn’t sure what determined someone’s immunity to the mind-controlling magic that had been present in the farmhouse, but he knew that Randan and himself were immune while Aly was not. Even though they wouldn’t figure it out for quite a while, I think it’s better if I let you in on the secret. The mind-controlling magic is Abyssal in nature, the corruption spreads like tendrils from another dimension and seeps into seemingly random places. Due to his ancestry, Elion was immune to its influence. Randan’s species – the Shiftlings – were a very special breed of biological weapon once created by Alen and Artoris working together. They are life born from death, lots and lots of death. His physiology grants him the mental fortitude required to keep the Abyss from taking him over – mainly because his mind and brain are constantly refreshing themselves whenever something tries to infect them. The Abyss can also be countered by mentally preparing oneself, which is what Aly now did. So, until she lost focus, she would be safe. Due to years of training and meditating, Aerean also had the innate mental fortitude to withstand simple passive mind-control. Tallioth however, he didn’t have any of this.

  As soon as they crossed the threshold and Tallioth stepped onto the first stones of the village, he felt something hit him in the head. A blinding pain that shot through his forehead into the space behind his eyes. Tendrils of the Abyss feed themselves on misery, and this village had seen a lot more of that than the lonely farmhouse could have possibly dreamt of. The core would be much stronger, and therefore more noticeable. None of the others even noticed its influence – except for Aly, who felt that she had to put effort into not falling under it herself.

  Tallioth cried out in silence, clawing first at his head and then blindly swinging his powerful arms around him hoping to ward off whatever it was that hurt him so.

  “Tallioth! What’s going on?” asked Aerean, who tried to get close without hurting herself. Tallioth only kept clawing at the ground and his head. Eventually he grabbed onto his horns, threatening to break them off. Then he fell limp. Slumped over, sitting on the ground on both his knees, his arms numb by his side. Smoke slowly started to rise from his nostrils – something that happened when he got angry, Aerean thought it was cute – and he stood up without responding to her question. He didn’t even pay them any mind until he opened his eyes again.

  Two black pits were pointed right at them, and then he charged.

  Randan was the first to get hit, mostly because he threw himself in front of Aerean as soon as he understood what was going on. Aerean’s own battle instincts took a second to kick in, but she soon had her staff at the ready. Randan was knocked back by the force of Tallioth’s charge, soaring through the air until an unfortunate wall stopped his flight.

  “Darn it, it may be the same source, but it’s got a different effect mate!” Randan yelled at Elion, who was getting his bow ready and an arrow nocked as fast as he could. Aly stood slightly behind him, and Tallioth seemed to be preparing another charge headed straight for her as he was trying to get an arrow in the right spot. The conditions weren’t this stressful when he was hunting, and archery required a lot of focus – and tranquillity – neither of which he was able to supply right now. When Tallioth charged towards Aly, he had no other option than to jump out of the way.

  Then, from the corner of his eye, he saw a flash of white. An isolated string, trailing behind Tallioth as he charged past him. Instinctively, Elion reached and out pulled on the piece of string.

  Right before Tallioth’s horns slammed into Aly’s chest, he was flung backwards and thrown on the ground. Even filled with rage and overtaken by the Abyss, this shocked him. It shocked Elion too, seeing something happen that – he had to assume – was completely because of him. Something that had actually happened. Not in a dream, not in a twisted memory, but in an actual combat scenario. Elion had just used magic.

  Tallioth soon got back up, and there were no strings attached to him now. The use of his powers – still sealed away deep within him – would be a one-time thing. For now at least.

  As the large Draconid charged again, he was tripped by Aerean and soon pressed solidly into the ground by Randan – who had changed himself into an almost equally large, grey elf. This was a rock-elf – or Roara – and they were incredibly durable and dense. Commonly considered to be the largest species of elves, they are often confused for Goliaths. There is a difference, somehow. I’ve seen the creation of both races, and I don’t know how they differ from one another. I believe one of them needs less sleep and can handle the cold better while the other thrives in warmer environments? There’s a lot of creatures and beings roaming the planes of existence, I can’t possibly be required to understand all of them. Nevertheless, using Randan’s dense physique and employing Aly’s supernatural strength allowed the group to force Tallioth into one of the abandoned houses lining the street, where they knocked him out and tied him up. Elion used all three bundles of rope they’d gotten from Elia to tie him up, and still Aerean doubted it would be enough to keep him from breaking out once he woke up again. That only left one choice.

  They would need to figure out what was going on in the village, and destroy whatever caused it. Preferably before they were all either crushed, mauled, or burned to death by a humanoid dragon.

  ???

  The remaining four decided to split up into two pairs of two, each set out to investigate a different part of the village. Elion and Randan would take the section reaching from the main road towards the north, and Aly and Aerean would investigate the southern side. They would start on the outer edges of the village and work inward, eventually joining back up to investigate the church that stood at the end of the main road.

  Elion and Randan set out due north, which appeared to be the more financial and industrial district of the village. Of course, it was merely a village, so this meant nothing more than the fact that the town’s baker, shoemaker, butcher, and carpenter were all huddled together on the same street. Elion decided to check out the bakery first, with Randan following closely. An eery silence had filled the entire village so far, but as soon as they entered the bakery Randan and Elion could hear the wet sound of someone munching on something in the back of the shop. Elion hesitated and slowly brought out his bow. Randan walked past him, slightly crouched in order to keep a low profile. He held a dagger in his right hand, ready to strike if needed. As he walked, his skin shifted and his bones grew thin, his muscles stretched from joint to joint like wires beneath increasingly thin skin. By the time his transformation had completed, Randan had taken the shape of an exceptionally thin deep-elf – a species of elf that had evolved to live underground. His ears – far more sensitive than before – could identify the sound more accurately now. He had heard it before.

  The splinters of bone getting caught between teeth, the wet mulching sounds of flesh and fat getting devoured. Cannibalism was a horrible act, one condemned in almost every culture throughout the realms, yet Randan had heard it often. Back in the arena, some of the fighters grew desperate during their months of fighting to survive. Some would ambush their cellmates in their sleep, and eat their uncooked flesh to remain fit. For some it was the only way to survive. In this particular instance, it was simply a man driven mad by conflicting sources of magic raging within his mind.

  Randan rounded the corner and could see him, bent over the corpse of a small girl. It did not smell like a recent kill. His eyes were black voids with small yet bright specks of gold in the middle, right around where the pupils would be. There was no personality left within him. Randan had seen it before, albeit for different reasons. Sometimes a man can be driven to and then beyond his breaking point. He had seen many variations of it – some would grow irrationally angry, some would simply refuse to move or speak and die a slow agonising death by starvation. Some – the ones he considered the most undone by their trauma – turned into animals. He didn’t even notice them, barely able to rip himself away from his feast. Randan was about to strike his dagger into the man’s skull, when an arrow flew past him and hit the man right above the ear. The arrow – primitive yet remarkably well-made – pierced the broken man’s skull and killed him instantly.

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  Randan turned around and saw Elion, his eyes closed and head hung down. He gave him a second, then put his hand on Elion’s shoulder. Elion opened his eyes, which were clearly filled to the brim with tears.

  “That was no man,” Elion said.

  Randan shook his head, “it was not.” A single tear rolled down his cheek and his the ground where it mixed with the trail of the dead man’s blood.

  “You did the right thing lad, don’t doubt it for a second. Once a man goes beyond a certain threshold, there’s no bringing them back. You merely ended his misery.” More tears joined the first one, and Randan could feel his own eyes start to water.

  “Have you ever had to do it?” Elion asked.

  “Aye, I have. Maybe I’ll tell ya ‘bout it someday, but not now. We have to keep moving, grab yer arrow.” Randan changed back into his normal self while Elion approached the dead man who now rested in a puddle of his own black blood, his victim’s dried-up blood, and Elion’s tears. While desperately trying to keep himself from gagging or coughing, Elion ripped the arrow out of the man’s skull and put it back in his quiver. They continued on to the butchery, where they fortunately found nothing besides the rotting remains of his wares. The same went for the shoemaker’s workshop, except the smell was far better.

  As soon as Elion set foot in the carpenter’s shop he knew something was wrong. There were no suspicious sounds or smells this time, but he felt it. He tried to reach it, sus out where the feeling was coming from, but he couldn’t even really find which one of his senses was triggered. If Elion had had full control over his powers at that point, he would have been able to see tethers reaching upwards from about a dozen people stuck in the basement. With no mind to speak of, the possessed were no more alive than puppets with their strings cut off. Without a puppeteer to control them, the creatures acted on instinct. Currently, the only instinct they had was to kill anyone not infected. So, as you might imagine, they were horribly excited when they heard the footsteps above them.

  At first it was only a single scream. It nearly made Elion’s blood freeze, but it got so much worse over the course of a mere five seconds. Another scream came from underneath them, followed by a hand smashing through the floorboards. A third scream, accompanied by another hand – this one mere centimetres away from Elion’s left foot. He looked up at Randan, who was almost as panicked as he was but didn’t let it show at all.

  “Run mate, run!” Randan screamed as he took his own advice and sprinted out the door. The screams were now constant and the hands had started to break away the planks, revealing faces with those same black eyes and golden pupils. Soon after Randan and Elion bolted out the door, the first infected jumped out of the basement and landed with no regard for his own safety face-first onto one of the wooden splinters pointed upwards, killing himself instantly. The second one had even less regard for its own safety, but far more luck, and started chasing after them.

  Randan turned around and kicked the infected in the chest, fluidly turning himself into a pale-elf for the added strength, mobility, and durability. The half-rotten chest of the infected gave way far too easily, and Randan had to draw his foot back to avoid it from getting bit by the creature as he kicked straight through his chest cavity.

  “How the hell are these things even alive?” Randan shouted as he swung around and hit the thing in the side, which luckily sent it flying. He knew the answer – after all, it was rather obvious. It was magic. It’s almost always magic. The specific kind of magic however, that’s far more interesting, and it actually has an exciting story behind it. But we will get to that part of the context later.

  “What does it matter?” Elion shouted back, perfectly proving that people of his generation are much more solution oriented. By his generation I mean demigods, mind you, not his mortal generation. Us gods can get very involved in the how and the why of things. I personally believe it is a very common side effect of immortality. Why get to the matter at hand if you’re never in a rush? In the grand scheme of divinity, Elion would be a member of the fourth generation if we look at it chronologically – although he is a member of the third generation if we look at the family tree, his mother being a child of Artoris and all.

  “I’m more interested in how we kill them than the semantics of why they’re running around! Any ideas?” Elion continued as he took out another arrow after the first one had gone off flying off in the distance, hitting absolutely nothing.

  “That other one died when you hit it in the head, maybe we try that?” Randan responded as he jammed his dagger into the skull of that infected he’d been kicking around. The light in its eyes faded – as did the dark mind you, they just returned to a normal white orb with a blue centre, perhaps with a hint of green – before it fell down and seemingly died. It was not a first for it, but this time the effects were far more permanent. Randan stuck up his thumb, and Elion made sure to aim his next arrow carefully in between the eyes of an infected that just came running out of the carpenter’s workshop. It soared through the air, hitting the infected and killing it without much trouble. The bodily decay and abyssal corruption had softened the bones and solid tissue of the infected, which made them essentially large blobs of gel. While Elion took care of the ones farther away, Randan picked off all the ones he missed by either crushing or splitting open their skulls. It worked a charm, and before soon they had taken care of all eleven remaining infected – considering the first had been so kind as to smash its own head into a piece of wood.

  The thrill and panic had kept Elion’s emotions at bay, but now that he saw and processed the twelve corpses that lay before him, he felt sick. For a moment he thought he could keep it in, but it soon became too much and he threw up. Randan gathered all the bodies and threw them on a pile. While Elion continued to empty his stomach contents – in quite a similar fashion as Aly had done the night before, albeit for a totally different reason – Randan went back into the bakery to collect the corpse of the infected Elion had killed and its victim. He threw the infected on the pile with rest, but wrapped the little girl in a white blanket he had apparently found in one of the buildings. One torch and a spark later both the bundle of white and the pile of black were burning.

  “When dealing with a lot of corpses, you always want to burn them,” Randan started. “If you bury all of them, it will attract creatures you don’t want to have roaming around near your village. Clerics do all kinds of rituals to ward off ghouls, but we have the time nor the expertise for that kind of thing. You can’t leave them lying around neither, that attracts the same things but also leaves behind one hell of an odour.” Elion noticed that Randan’s accent had slightly faded. It was still there, but the words were more articulated – almost as if Randan spoke with more of a purpose – leading him to believe Randan’s speech patterns had just as much to do with his mood as his origins, which were still completely unknown to him.

  They soon left the burning corpses behind them, continuing on with their investigation of the village. They encountered no more roaming infected, finding even the homes completely abandoned. There were signs of a hurried departure; scraps of food withering away half-eaten on the dinner table, doors left open, furniture knocked over. It would have given Elion a feeling of dread if the line of what he considered to be dreadful hadn’t been moved over to the other end of the field. Numb, he simply cleared home after home, until he finally found a clue as to what had happened.

  He found a letter left for someone who had apparently been out right around the time all hell broke loose.

  Stalo fell ill, we took him to the church this morning. Priests told us to gather some clothes and join them in the catacombs. Apparently it should be safe there. Safe from what I don’t know, but Father Halis was very insistent.

  With Love, Anlo

  P.S. please be safe

  That appeared to be where the original letter ended, but someone had written down an answer in a hurry. In barely legible scribbles at the very bottom of the paper, it read:

  I tried, please forgive me.

  Elion could feel his eyes start to water, even though he had no idea which emotion was responsible. All the events of the day had melded into one large grey glob of feeling and he had more and more trouble processing all of it with every added event. It wasn’t until he noticed his nails cutting into the palms of his hands that he actually felt the anger that was flowing through him. He didn’t know where it came from or who it was that he was angry with, but he could barely contain his rage. Thoughts of that damned church and the betrayal they had inflicted upon the people of the village kept running through his mind. He could only imagine the desperation those poor people had felt as they huddled together in the catacombs, hearing the infection rage through the streets. If the sick had also been kept in the catacombs, it was likely they’d turned into full infected at some point – transforming the catacombs into a death-maze.

  “Elion, we’re almost back at the main road. We should get going.” Elion turned around, the letter crumpled into a small ball in his hand. Randan stood in the doorway, looking at him with a mix of pity and confusion. He recognised the process Elion was going through, although he had never experienced it himself. Randan was born in the desolation of a battlefield, he had been desensitized to suffering from the moment he first gained sentience. He’d seen it in the younger soldiers that he’d served with however. The newer fighters in the arena as well. When being confronted with great tragedy, sometimes the only thing that makes sense it to get angry at everything. Elion didn’t know where to direct his anger, and if he didn’t figure it out soon it would slowly consume him until there was nothing left.

  They walked out of the house again, leaving it behind like they had all the others.

  “Apparently there were people hiding down in the catacombs below the village. There’s an entrance through the church I think,” Elion mumbled.

  “Aye mate, I thought it’d be something like that. We can never avoid going into scary places when dealing with things like this, can we? Of course it’d be the damned catacombs.”

  They soon arrived at the church entrance, where they found Aerean and Aly patiently talking to each other. Elion had half expected them to rip each other apart, so this was quite a nice surprise. In case you were wondering why they had chosen the couples they had, it was for tactical reasons. Randan’s close-range fighting paired very well with Elion’s archery as we saw earlier, and Aerean’s fast movement and heightened senses paired very well with Aly’s magic. Besides, Randan thought it would be a good idea for the two women to be forced to work together. Fortunately, it had all worked out.

  Now, it was time for them to go into the church and get rid of the Abyssal core that was hiding down in the catacombs.