The throne room fell into silence, all the spectators speechless at what they had witnessed.
Blood crept across white marble in thin branching lines, pooling around bodies that moments ago had been living people. Someone in the gallery gagged and began retching.
Other soldiers stood frozen in shock at how a frail and weak looking creature tore through their comrades.
King Tharion was the first to recover.
"Lock everywhere down," he roared, half out of his throne. "Seal every gate, every corridor, every tower. Archers to the walls. Mages to the inner ring, use whatever scrying spells you have. Find him. Find him now."
Guards rushed in panic and fear at the thought of pursuing something that dangerous, their boots squelching from blood that had pooled out on the floor.
The gallery began to buzz with rising hysteria.
"That was no child."
"Has the church summoned the devil?"
"His face, by the gods."
"The dark god," someone whispered, fear filling her voice. "He bore its mark. We are doomed."
The minor nobles and elites clustered together, trembling in their expensive enough to feed fifty families outfits, staring at corpses with disbelief, then at the king, then at the high priestess.
Questions quickly turned into accusations.
"This is sacrilege."
"You said the heroes were to save us."
"You said they were chosen by the gods."
The king rounded on the priestess, voice low and furious. "Explain. Now. How did that thing enter my castle. How did the dark god choose him."
Elowen's voice was calm, though her brow was furrowed deeply. "He was not summoned," she said. "Not intentionally. He was dragged along, most likely by proximity.
A parasite in the spell. Judging from his attire, his countenance… he is not one of the chosen.
The dark god must have taken him as a vessel the moment the summoning was over."
"Are you mad, should such a mistake even be allowed to happen?" the king barked, rising fully from his throne.
Elowen replied calmly, "There is no sure fire way to predict what is on the other side. We only had the intent of purity put as a beacon of the spell. Does that thing look pure to you?"
Murmurs swelled through the hall.
"A bad omen."
"A curse."
"The dark ages are returning."
"We're all going to die."
All eyes turned to the frightened middle-aged man as the hall went silent. The man, noticing the "really dude" stares, turned red and coughed slightly. "I apologise."
Before it could spiral further, the king snapped his fingers. "Remove the heroes. Now."
The guards moved to the students, who stood in a state of confusion after exiting their trance. Their teacher was pale, eyes fixed on the corpses as if expecting the situation to be a film set and the director calling cut.
They were ushered away through a side passage, voices overlapping, eyes wide.
The doors closed behind them with a heavy slam.
The king turned to the nobles in the gallery. "Do not let a word of this leave this room. Whoever speaks of it will be executed for treason. You may leave."
Slowly, the nobles, their servants, and attendants began to disperse under the king's dismissal. King Tharion called Bruce, the Knight Captain, who knelt before him awaiting orders.
"I don't care about catching it, kill that demon. Any means necessary."
"Yes, my lord. It will be done."Bruce got to his feet, donned his helmet, and dashed out of the throne room.
Elowen, with her remaining paladins, departed to consult the gods, seeking clarity on how the dark god had claimed a vessel.
Outside, Shade was already running. After falling from a window, sliding off some roof tiles, and finally landing into a pile of hay in the courtyard on some Ezio type shit, he jumped onto the garrison wall and kept moving.
The cobbled roads of the noble district were made of very fine stone, polished without a speck of dust, clicking under his boots as he moved.
Large manors sat on either side, their courtyards so vast he had to squint to find where the actual buildings started.
The roads were as wide as a highway on earth, built for fancy bullshit, probably carriages and processions, not for a bleeding dude in a black hoodie running like Barry.
He kept running, eyes cutting left and right. He saw large manors with front courtyards and gardens as big as football fields, grand houses so far back he had to squint to see them. He half expected guards to step out and stop him.
Most just stared with confusion, some with a hint of curiosity at the strangely dressed man running like he ate too much Mexican.
None of them moved. Some spared him a glance, some watched till he was out of sight.
He watched one guard track him from a gatehouse, eyes following him the full length of the road, and then look away.
Rich people's district. Rich people minded their business, and their workers sure as hell weren't leaving their posts without being commanded to.
He kept running, feeling the power Nolthar had pushed into him still moving, still settling, making him feel weird on the inside. But he was fast. Faster than he had ever been.
His leg hit the ground and the ground felt far away, each stride covering more distance than it should. He felt strong and light at the same time, like an athlete on compound V and cocaine.
Then he heard it. Thunderous pounding that sounded like the footsteps of humongasaur. He looked back.
The Knight Captain was covered in a blue aura that poured off his armor, sword drawn, looking like Sonic, booking straight toward him.
"Well, shit, not like he can get any faster."
Suddenly the amount of aura coming off him multiplied as he sped up, shredding the distance between them.
"I'm fucked. Oh shit, oh shit, oh shit. What to do, what to do, what to do." He kept running, beginning to see the end of the noble district ahead.
Sadly the Knight Captain would catch him before he reached there if he didn't do something. Thinking on his feet, he opened his system on the move and started scrolling fast, looking for anything useful.
Stats. Passives. Skills. Skills —
NEW SKILL LEARNED: Shadow Step
— Disappear from current position and reappear at any shadow within 30 meters.
— Cooldown: 0.
— Requires intent.
Shade pumped his fist in the air. "Alright, giggity."
Remembering his situation, he felt immense heat behind him and a hand closing around the back of his hoodie.
"NO NO NO NO NO, WAIT WAIT WAIT WAIT WAIT"
Moving on pure muscle memory, his hand went into the duffel, found the smoke bomb, and he spun and drove it straight into the Knight Captain's face with a sharp crack.
Blue smoke erupted between them.
"How about some dirt in your eye," Shade smirked, but it suddenly disappeared.
Then he remembered.
A knight who could use aura didn't need their eyes. They could sense without them. There were dozens of light novels about blind swordsmen that backed this up entirely.
He had read it once on a slow week between contracts and filed it under interesting, not relevant. It was very relevant now.
To prove his conclusion, the Knight Captain emerged from the smoke without slowing. His sword arm came up, aura condensing along the blade into something that hummed at a frequency Shade felt in his teeth.
The slash came horizontal, tracking left as Shade moved left, tracking right as Shade tried to shake it by moving left then right.
The swing still followed, its bright blue aura finding him through the smoke and announcing its arrival.
Shade activated Shadow Step. Within a second he felt everything collapse and compress him, pressure crushing him from all sides.
He then shot out from under a parked carriage near a very fine restaurant, wood and lacquer and the smell of something expensive cooking inside.
Behind him, the aura slash connected with the cobblestones where he had been standing.
A loud boom sounded as stone exploded outward in a long furrow, the cut running fifteen meters down the road before the energy bled out.
A carriage horse screamed as people stopped to stare, it was not a common occurrence to hear such commotion in the noble district.
Shade kept running, turning back to see the Knight Captain clawing at his eyes. His smoke bomb also had pepper itching powder and fiberglass.
That would buy him enough time as he saw more soldiers heading his way from the castle.
Reaching the wall where archers had already loaded bows at him, he shadow stepped once more and found himself on the other side, dodging arrows and ignoring the yelling behind him.
Bells began clanging across the city, rolling outward from the castle in waves, the kind of sound that meant gates and searches and every guard in the district being roused from whatever they'd been doing.
The stone under his feet changed. Finer cobbles gave way to rougher paving. The manors fell behind him. The buildings were built closer.
Laundry lines crossed overhead. The smell changed from incense and cut grass to cooking oil and woodsmoke.
He quickly hopped across rooftops before diving into a quiet alley, leaning against a cold wall catching his breath before he continued running.