Kadia Village, Central Square.
Like Muller, the ten fully armored men-at-arms had also collapsed to the ground, each drowning in their own private abyss of illusion.
One young guard wore a look of delirious bliss, his hands groping through empty air as he murmured, "Alice... my Alice, you've finally come back to me..."
Tears of joy slid from the corners of his eyes, as though he were wrapped in the embrace of a long-lost lover.
Several other guards were the same: lips moving soundlessly, faces slack with rapture, as if reliving the most beautiful moments of their lives.
And in that instant when everyone was ensnared...
A powerful figure hidden in the shadows lunged at Muller.
It was the hunter, who had been biding his time, waiting for exactly this moment before erupting into action.
The hunter radiated bloodlust. His eyes burned with predatory hunger, the dark muscles of his face twisted by fury, veins bulging beneath the skin.
A steel blade gleamed in his hand. His footsteps were heavy and purposeful as he bore down on the fallen old knight like a beast closing in on its prey.
"Die, you foreign dog!"
The hunter let out a bestial roar. His arms flexed, the blade raised high, aimed directly at Muller's skull.
The villagers watched in horror as the hunter wrenched Muller up by his silver hair.
Crack.
The gleaming blade slashed savagely across Muller's throat.
One stroke.
Blood erupted like a burst pipe, soaking the hunter's arm and chest in an instant.
Muller's body convulsed violently, but his consciousness remained submerged in the illusion of Celia, utterly unaware of any pain in the waking world.
A second stroke.
The hunter's blade came down again, more savage than before. The edge drove deep into bone, scraping against the hard vertebrae with a sound that made the stomach turn.
Tear. Flesh parted from flesh. Muller's neck was severed completely.
Blood cascaded out like a broken dam, staining the surrounding earth a deep crimson. The heavy stench of iron saturated the air.
Muller's head separated from his body and rolled across the ground. His grey eyes still held that dazed, intoxicated look, as though he were still gazing at Celia in his dream.
The hunter raised the old knight's head aloft and bellowed at the sky.
He lifted his powerful arm high, blood dripping from the severed neck onto his contorted face, making him look all the more monstrous.
In that moment, his eyes blazed with murderous frenzy. His chest heaved like a beast that had just made its kill.
Witnessing this, Theodore's eyes went bloodshot and he burst into wild laughter.
"Ha ha ha ha ha! That goddamn knight is finally dead!"
Looking at Muller's blood-soaked head, Theodore's laughter grew more shrill and unhinged. A sickly flush spread across his cheeks, and his eyes burned with fanatical fervor.
"Do you see that? This is the goddess's great power!"
He spread his arms wide and tilted his face toward the sky, his voice trembling with both reverence and madness. "Under the goddess's protection, not one of these outside invaders will leave alive. Every last one of them will die!"
Theodore spun around to face the villagers, his expression growing more grotesque by the second. "The goddess has granted us the power of vengeance! Never again will we be trampled by these noble savages!"
He pointed toward the fallen men-at-arms and the adventurers of Ice Hawks Company, his voice cutting like a blade. "Kill them! Leave no one alive!"
Hesitation and fear flickered briefly across the villagers' faces, but that fragile thread of reason was swiftly consumed by hatred and fanaticism.
They gripped their sharpened wooden spears and surged toward the entranced guards like a rising tide.
"Here! The armor has a gap here!" one villager cried, trembling as he pointed to a seam in the plating.
"While they're trapped by the goddess's power! Do it now!"
Another villager gritted his teeth and drove a sharpened, poison-coated wooden stake through a gap under a guard's arm.
Snik.
The sound of wood piercing flesh. The guard's body twitched faintly, but he felt no pain, his mind still sunk in the depths of illusion.
The villagers swarmed in, hunting for weak points in the armor and forcing their poisoned stakes through every gap they found.
Some aimed for the throat, others stabbed for the heart, and still others tore open the arteries of the thigh.
Thud. Thud.
One stake after another punched through flesh, severing arteries. Blood seeped steadily from the gaps in the armor.
One by one the guards died inside their illusory cages, unable to move, able only to receive the stakes that found their vital points.
The entire square had become a blood-soaked slaughterhouse. Blood pooled across the ground, and the reek of death hung over everything.
---
Meanwhile, outside Kadia Village.
The moment Orum turned his gaze toward the village, a torrent of iridescent magical light crashed over him like a wave, swallowing him and Melina beside him in an instant.
What in the hells is this? The alarm bells in his mind screamed. His instincts urged him to resist the mysterious force, but the light came too fast, too suddenly. He had no time to react at all.
An instant later, Melina stumbled behind him and collapsed straight onto the grass.
"Melina?!" Orum spun around in alarm, crouching beside her and brushing the disheveled hair from her forehead.
Her eyes were shut, her face softened into an expression of hazy bliss. Her body trembled faintly, as though she were witnessing something of extraordinary beauty.
Orum lifted her eyelids and found her completely unresponsive, her eyes twitching rapidly beneath the lids, showing no reaction to the change in light.
He noticed that she was murmuring something under her breath.
He leaned down to listen.
"Mama... mama... I miss you so much..."
Melina's voice was fragile and trembling, full of warmth and joy.
Her hands reached blindly through the air, as though trying to grasp something precious that was just out of reach.
"What's going on? Why is she calling for her mother all of a sudden?"
Orum frowned and lightly patted her cheek trying to rouse her, but she didn't react at all.
Every alarm he had went off at once. Melina's symptoms were unmistakable, identical to what the old tales described when someone fell victim to a mental attack.
Faced with this sudden crisis, Orum shot to his feet and scanned his surroundings.
But then his own vision began to blur.
The world tilted and spun. Colors drained away. Sound grew distant and muffled.
An irresistible force was pulling at his consciousness, slowly tearing away his control over his own body.
Then everything went dark. Orum's vision fell into absolute blackness.
In the pitch dark, Orum braced himself for something terrible to come. He tightened his nerves, preparing for whatever attack might be waiting.
But several dozen seconds passed, and the anticipated attack never came. This darkness was complete and featureless, an absolute void containing nothing at all.
No sound, no light, no sensation whatsoever. As though he had been sealed inside a perfectly enclosed space.
"Where is this?"
Orum tried to find light, to recover the sensation of his own body. He focused his will and attempted to feel his own limbs.
Before long, he sensed something: his fingertips still existed.
A faint sensation prickled at them, as if touching something soft beneath him, the soil of the ground, carrying a faint trace of moisture.
Then came his palm. Then his arm.
He was reaching further, working to reclaim control of his body, when a tremendous force descended from the highest point of his soul. It was like a vast whirlpool, seizing his consciousness and ripping it upward with violent force.
He felt his soul being dragged, pulled away from his body and drawn into an entirely new realm of the mind.
It was like an out-of-body experience: his awareness had slipped free from the anchor of his flesh and was rising into the air.
When Orum opened his eyes again, he found himself standing in a dense green forest.
Sunlight filtered down through the gaps between leaves, casting dappled light and shadow across the ground below. The air was saturated with the scent of grass and wildflowers, and birds sang merrily in the branches above.
Beneath his feet, the soft earth was carpeted in moss, giving gently with each step.
Towering, otherworldly trees rose like natural pillars, their trunks massive, their canopies so dense they nearly blotted out the sky entirely.
Along every branch, streams of glowing particles drifted like rivers of starlight, moving slowly and illuminating the quiet forest in a soft radiance.
The place looked like something out of a dream, the kind of enchanted woodland that troubadours described in their most beautiful fairy tales.
Yet it felt completely real. Orum looked down at his own hands. He could feel the breeze brushing his cheek. He could hear the sound of a stream somewhere in the distance.
"What kind of place is this?"
Orum looked up, and his gaze paused for a moment, a hint of disbelief crossing his eyes.
In the depths of the forest, he saw figures made of vines and bark: Wood Woad, each holding a spear, standing like silent sentinels. Their bodies were covered in green moss, their eyes gleaming with a faint verdant light, as though they had grown from the forest itself.
These Wood Woad stood in disciplined formation, guarding a small, dreamlike palace deep within the woods.
The palace was not built on the ground. It rested atop a floating slab of green rock. Beneath the rock, a sea of clouds churned and billowed, white mist surging like a tide, with rainbow bridges occasionally stretching out from it to make faint, ghostly contact with the earth below.
The palace gates were sealed shut, carved with intricate patterns that emitted a soft and steady magical glow.
In front of the palace, beneath an elegant pavilion, a young woman sat at a table, calmly drinking tea.
Her every movement was delicate, and each posture radiated an unhurried, aristocratic grace.
Her body was no larger than a human palm. Behind her, she had a pair of insect-like wings, gossamer-thin and translucent, shimmering with prismatic light in the glow of the luminous particles.
Her face was fine-featured, her expression small and precise, her skin soft and pale as the finest porcelain. A pair of characteristic pointed ears peeked out from beneath her flowing hair, lending her bearing a touch of otherworldly elegance.
Behind her head, hair cascaded down like a waterfall, shifting in color from deep green to golden brown, swaying gently in the breeze.
From her physical features, Orum recognized her immediately as a forest fairy of considerable magical power. Her every movement carried an air of someone capable of stirring a storm of magical energy with a flick of her hand.
"A curious little thing," said the young woman, her jewel-like crimson eyes settling on Orum's face. Her voice was clear and melodic, like wind chimes, yet carried an unmistakable thread of authority.
"My illusion failed to work on you."
"And the reason," she said, the corners of her mouth curling into a playful smile, "is that there is nothing in your memories worth holding onto."
"My name is Korlindra, lord of the fey from the Court of Merriment." She waved a hand lightly, gesturing for Orum to take a seat on a nearby polished stump. "Of course, what remains here is merely one fragment of my will."
Orum realized it then. This forest, this palace, this fairy lord seated before him: all of it was an illusion, a projection of the mind.
Orum didn't hesitate. He asked directly, "You're the one behind everything going on in Kadia Village?"
He could barely believe it. The mastermind behind all the sins committed in Kadia Village was an archfey.
The missing merchants. The adventurers captured and trafficked. The forest lizards driven to prey on humans. All of it traced back to this tiny, doll-like fairy.
Korlindra looked at the shock on Orum's face and smiled with obvious satisfaction.
Those brilliant crimson eyes suddenly sparkled with a mischievous gleam.
"Don't you think it's all rather amusing?" Korlindra's voice carried a hint of frivolity, as though she were discussing a delightful piece of theater.
"Humans," she continued slowly, "are quite fascinating creatures."
She swirled her teacup gently. "All it takes is a small display of extraordinary power, and these pathetic wretches descend into fanaticism. They convince themselves that everything they've suffered was fate, and that a god will come to redeem them."
Her tone carried a faint note of contempt, laced with unmistakable amusement.
Korlindra then extended one hand. Dazzling magical light gathered in her palm, reconstructing scene after scene in brilliant color, projecting them before Orum like visions suspended in the air, vivid and clear as a film.
The first scene: a stormy night, inside a shabby, drafty house full of cracks.
Theodore, the village head of Kadia, his face drawn with worry, knelt alone in a sealed room before a wooden effigy of a goddess whose face had been worn away. He prayed devoutly.
His face was etched with anxiety and despair, his lips trembling as he whispered his supplication.
He prayed for the storm to stop. He prayed for adventurers to come and protect the village. He prayed that the forest lizards would not return.
Theodore had run out of options. The attacks and destruction wrought by the forest lizards had pushed an already impoverished village to the brink of ruin.
If the creatures came again, many villagers would not survive.
The village's food stores were nearly depleted. The crying of the children kept him awake at night.
With nowhere left to turn, Theodore had resorted to praying before this old effigy that had stood in the village temple, clinging to it with desperate faith.
Every day, he came to the sealed room, knelt on the cold floor, and bowed his head again and again, repeating the same prayers.
But seven days passed without any answer. The storm did not relent. Theodore felt his hope crumbling, and despair closed in over him like a shroud.
On that very night, when Theodore's spirit had nearly broken, while he lay sleeping, his aged and weary soul was drawn into the depths of a lush green forest.
In that dreamlike, fairy-tale woodland, Theodore encountered the "goddess," Korlindra.
In the dream, Korlindra's figure appeared towering and magnificent. Her face wore a gentle smile, and her voice rang like something from the heavens.
The "goddess" told him that she had once received a great kindness from this village two hundred years ago.
Now she had returned to repay that debt, and she was willing to extend her divine protection over Kadia Village.
The next time the forest lizards attacked, she said, Theodore needed only to carry the wooden effigy out to face them and offer a sacrifice of his own blood. The "goddess" would then release her magic and restrain the creatures.
The dream felt utterly real.
Even after Theodore woke, he could recall every detail with perfect clarity: the forest in the dream, the goddess's face, every word she had spoken.
And so Theodore believed it without reservation.
He began prostrating before the wooden effigy with even greater fervor each day, eyes gleaming with a hope that bordered on obsession.
When the lizards attacked again, Theodore followed the goddess's instruction, carrying the wooden effigy out to meet them.
He gripped the effigy with both hands, his knuckles white, his body trembling slightly. His face was written with fear, yet beneath the fear was something more resolute, a conviction bordering on fanaticism.
The villagers' terrified, disbelieving eyes were all fixed on Theodore.
"Village head, get back here!"
"Those are monsters out there!"
"Has Theodore lost his mind?!"
The voices of the crowd rose around him, but Theodore heard none of it. He kept his eyes locked on the massive lizard that came roaring toward him.
As it charged straight at him, Theodore held his ground against the oncoming death and smothered the panic rising in his chest.
His heart pounded so hard it felt as though it might tear through his ribs.
But when he thought of the village's suffering, when he thought of the promise the dream-goddess had made, Theodore set his jaw.
He drew a sharp knife and opened a gash on his aged arm. Blood dripped down onto the earth before the effigy.
He fell to his knees and pressed his forehead to the ground in a long, deep bow.
In that moment, Theodore thought: if this fails, let it be the end. Let this be where it stops. He was tired of the poverty, the despair, the fear. Death, perhaps, would be a mercy.
Then, before the stunned eyes of the assembled villagers, a halo of magical light burst from the wooden effigy.
The light was soft yet overwhelming. It washed over the sprinting forest lizard in an instant.
The creature's massive body lurched to a halt. It let out a shriek of agony and was held completely in place, pinned by some invisible net.
Its limbs thrashed and convulsed, but it could not break free.
What followed was Theodore learning, step by step as the goddess instructed, how to tame the forest lizard. He fed it food laced with special herbs and soothed it with gentle words.
The fearsome magical beast was eventually made into one of Kadia Village's own.
From there, under Korlindra's manipulation, Theodore began a systematic transformation of the village into something altogether different.
The wooden palisades were reinforced and raised higher. Sharpened wooden spears were planted in dense rows, every tip coated in deadly poison.
The villagers were given basic combat training, taught how to use their new weapons.
And this once-unremarkable village took to banditry.
At first, the villagers preyed only on passing travelers. They robbed caravans of their goods and sometimes killed to keep their secrets.
In time, they set their sights on merchant wagons, and then on adventuring parties, because every successful attack on these "high-value targets" brought far greater plunder.
In Kadia Village, when a man was captured, a great cauldron was brought out in the square. Each household contributed spices and vegetables, and the whole village shared at least a bowl of meat broth.
When a woman was captured, the mood in the village was considerably more festive.
That woman, whether a merchant or an adventurer, would become a shared possession of the village's men. After being subjected to every conceivable abuse, she would be sold into slavery, every last use wrung from her before she was discarded.
Not long before, a group of adventurers had accepted a commission posted by Kadia Village.
They were Torvred, captain of the Mountain Shield party; Karyn, a female swordswoman; and Anna, a cleric.
The three had just taken out loans to upgrade their equipment and had come to clear out a goblin infestation.
Under Theodore's practiced deception, bringing them down had required little effort at all.
He welcomed them with a fawning smile and warm hospitality.
Torvred and his companions believed Theodore's words, drank the evening meal laced with sedatives, and were soon unconscious.
What followed for the Mountain Shield party was seven days of hell.
Torvred was killed. The swordswoman Karyn, after days of abuse, had her body give out, her wounds becoming infected, and she died of those injuries.
Only the cleric Anna survived, reduced to something resembling a walking corpse. Her tongue was cut out, and she was sold on the black market as a slave.
After that, the final scene flashed before Orum's eyes.
The wooden effigy radiated magical light. Muller, the men-at-arms, and the three members of Ice Hawks Company were struck by the illusory magic and collapsed, helpless before the villagers of Kadia, who closed in around them like a pack of wolves.
Orum's dulled consciousness snapped back with a jolt.
Felix and the others were still out there on that square, caught in the middle of a catastrophe.
---
Orum's fist drove forward with explosive force. It tore through the air and slammed directly into Korlindra in front of him.
The next instant, the world in his vision shattered like glass.
Thousands upon thousands of fragments detonated outward into the void, and the entire green forest vanished without a trace.
Orum's vision plunged back into darkness.
In the blackness, he heard Korlindra's laughter ringing out.
"Hehehehe!"
Her voice echoed through the empty void, dripping with mockery and malice.
"You might break free from my mental control eventually, but by the time you do, your companions will already be dead! Ha ha ha ha!"
Orum looked up sharply. Korlindra's figure appeared far above him, as though perched on the vault of some invisible sky, dancing on currents of wind.
Her body flickered with a dim light in the darkness, her face twisted into a deranged smile as she laughed down at him with shrill, piercing delight.
Orum's gaze went ice-cold. A roar tore out of him, saturated with killing intent. "You're going to die for this."
His voice seemed to rise from somewhere beneath the depths of the earth, carrying a bone-chilling, murderous calm.
"If my companions are missing so much as a single finger, I will burn Kadia Village to white ash. I will slaughter every last soul in it."
He ground his teeth, his eyes locked on Korlindra far above.
Watching Orum's fury, Korlindra only laughed harder. "Then burn it!"
Her voice was soaked in contempt. "These lowly mortals are nothing but playthings for my amusement anyway. Hehehehe!"
Her laughter grew increasingly unhinged, as though she had heard the funniest joke in the world.
"You wretched entertainment-seekers deserve exactly what's coming to you!"
Orum's rage broke through every restraint. His chest heaved. His fists clenched so tight his knuckles went white.
A fury unlike anything he had ever felt before blazed inside him, hotter than any fire he had known.
In the grip of that extreme rage, he felt something inside himself, something long suppressed and coiled deep, beginning to surge and churn and press against its limits, desperate to break free.
His eyes turned red. Veins rose beneath the skin of his arms and temples. Orum clutched his own head and released a roar like a wounded animal.
The sound reverberated through the entire boundless dark void.
And before Korlindra's astonished eyes, from the shadows behind Orum, a beam of pure black light shot out, thin as a strand of hair.
That beam carried within it the most profound force of annihilation, and a malice of absolute extremity.
"Divine dark power?!" Korlindra's eyes went wide.
The smile on her face froze. A flash of disbelief crossed her eyes, quickly followed by fear.
She tried to dodge, but within this plane of the mind, there was no avoiding any attack. There was nowhere to go.
She could only watch as the black beam crossed the void and came for her.
It passed through her without a sound, the way a laser burns a pinhole through thin paper.
Korlindra's chest, her shoulder, half of her face: all of it ceased to exist, erased as cleanly as if a hand had rubbed them from a drawing. Only the broken other half of her remained.
"The Goddess of Misfortune..." Korlindra's remaining half-face whispered, barely audible, the words saturated with shock and hatred.
Then black flames erupted from the wound and devoured what was left of her body in an instant.
That fragment of Korlindra's will was obliterated utterly. Her laughter, her malice, her very existence: all of it burned to nothing.
The all-encompassing black world shattered at once, like a broken mirror, countless shards flying outward in every direction.
Orum's eyes snapped open, and he returned to the waking world. His consciousness slammed back into his body, and a wave of severe vertigo hit him.
Everything around him became sharp and clear. He saw the wagon. He saw Melina lying on the ground. He saw the tall wooden palisade of Kadia Village rising in the distance.
Without a moment's hesitation, Orum seized the Flamesteel halberd at his side. His arms swelled with muscle, and a devastating, volcanic power surged and concentrated in an instant.
The halberd struck the towering palisade like a siege cannon, backed by thunderous, unstoppable force.
Crash.
The wooden palisade erupted with a world-splitting boom. It exploded into a hail of fragments, splinters of wood raining down in every direction.
That barrier of mortal construction collapsed entirely before Orum's single, thunderous blow.
---
On the other side, the central square erupted into chaos.
The thunderous crash shook all of Kadia Village.
Theodore, frozen in place by the sudden sound, felt the fanatical grin on his face falter. A flicker of confusion and unease crossed his eyes.
He wrenched his head around toward the direction of the noise.
In that split second of distraction, beside Felix, Raygore suddenly stood up.
His body stiffened briefly as it shed the discomfort of breaking free from the illusion. Then, like a massive beast waking from a deep sleep, that terrifying physique unleashed a mountainous, brutal force.
Raygore let out a low rumble of a roar. The massive black greatsword in his hand was hurled with tremendous force.
A throw.
Whoosh.
The black greatsword cut through the air with a shriek of displaced wind and streaked directly toward Theodore at staggering speed.
Theodore's pupils shrank to pinpoints. He tried to dodge, but for a body worn down by age, it was already too late.
Thud.
The greatsword found its mark and split Theodore's body clean in two.
Blood and viscera sprayed outward together, raining down in a crimson cascade.
---
Please choose your alignment (comment your choice):
Lawful Good: Strives to act as a good person should, committed to fighting evil, punishing wrongdoing, keeping promises, helping others, and upholding justice, as exemplified by a paladin who stands against evil.
Neutral Good: Does the best one can to help others, works within established systems without feeling beholden to them, and offers aid according to need, as exemplified by a cleric who helps where help is needed.
Chaotic Good: Acts on conscience, rarely concerned with the expectations of others, does things in their own way, is kind and generous, and sees little use for laws or rules, as exemplified by a folk hero who robs from the rich to give to the poor.
Lawful Neutral: Acts in accordance with law, tradition, or personal code; values order and organization; may follow a private code or one meant for all; as exemplified by a warden who carries out punishment according to orders.
True Neutral: Holds no particular conviction or preference, avoids taking sides between good and evil or order and chaos; some hold a philosophy of balance, viewing extremes as dangerous; as exemplified by someone who goes whichever way the wind blows, or a sage who remains above worldly affairs.
Chaotic Neutral: Acts on personal whim, is a thorough individualist, values personal freedom but does not protect the freedom of others, disdains authority, and subverts convention, as exemplified by a wandering bard who lives by wit alone.
Lawful Evil: Pursues personal goals with methodical planning, is constrained by a code of conduct but disregards the feelings of others, values tradition, loyalty, and order, cares nothing for freedom, dignity, or life, operates by rules without mercy or compassion, as exemplified by a noble who oppresses the common people.
Neutral Evil: Does whatever can be gotten away with, thinks only of personal benefit, has no preference for order or chaos, follows the law when profitable and breaks it otherwise, as exemplified by an information broker or a criminal who profits from crime.
Chaotic Evil: Driven by desire, hatred, and the urge to destroy; hot-tempered, vicious, arbitrary; uses extreme violence without hesitation; takes whatever is wanted without restraint; as exemplified by a plague upon civilization itself.