Curselock

Chapter 219: Doom

“Brigade one halt! Brigade two fire!” a nameless soldier yelled.

“Brigade one halt! Brigade two fire!” the Palemarrow army repeated.

The wave of attacks were weaker than the first brigade, at least at the start. They ran, all melee forces as well as adventurers and guards. Glenny and Jude were among this force, as well as their parents. Carmon, Diana, and Roy darted in and out of the action, each making use of their steep power to do what they did best.

Devastating echoed blows came from Carmon. Roy took the brunt of the Sightless King’s regulations, blocking every searing attack like it was little more than hot water. And lastly, Diana moved at a speed most regular soldiers couldn’t see, striking the massive eyeball from angles least expected.

They were winning, something that rang like a gong inside of Glenny’s mind. They were pushing the Sightless King back, they were inflicting horrid damage to its hellish body. He added to the assault, stabbing two long crimson daggers into the monster. He twisted them, sundering gore and a wash of blood just as Jude hammered down with his red stained axe.

A portal opened below both of their feet, and suddenly the two friends were meters back, the place they were just standing a pillar of pure anger. Primordial magic rose from the charred ground, striking at even intervals like lightning on a storming night.

Jude and Glenny easily danced backward, the telegraphed attacks simple. At least while the Sightless King defended, that was.

Yelling sounded from the soldiers, a cry escaped those closest to the great beast, a painful, chilling scream. Some died instantly, the sound of mangled bodies slamming into pavement ever familiar for the people in this line of work. Next came the painful sobs, those with suddenly missing arms or gored stomachs.

Glenny eyed the mess, finding spikes of hardened blood jutting from the fresh wounds on the Sightless King like a hedgehog. Portals appeared below the survivors, taking them to somewhere serene and, hopefully, full of medical Legacies. Those who were already dead, Spencer couldn’t help.

Just then, a portal over the Sightless King opened. Like a barrage of artillery fire, seven lightning bolts the thickness of trees came crashing down. Appearing in an instant, the monster hardly had time to react. But react he did. Shields of red, both blood and primordial crimson, sprung to action, some failing to appear in time.

The smell of burnt skin wafted through the battlefield, the Sightless King the source. A groan slipped out, an anguish leagues above the petty wounds of earlier. He wasn’t healing, his wounds bloodied and raw.

It was in that minute, second, that thin fragment of a moment, the Sightless King became. Shifting in his own skin, power, malevolent and hungry, radiated. It pulled at the open air and the stone that made up the ground. Vileness, the power of taking, the sin of greed, sowed the fields and ate the crops of man. What remained was only corruption, a corruption of vigilant ferocity.

The dead bodies disappeared, taken by the Sightless King and repurposed.

Eyes appeared, each the size of a window, and each a beacon to look into another world. Domains of doom opened to darkness, hatred spilled forth for blood, muscle, and bone. The Sightless King relished the revolution, the time for him to take was here. Ten, twenty, fifty, one hundred, one thousand.

Countless eyes appeared, each taken from his most loyal of followers. They were dead now, each left to rot while what made them them was taken. Greed. It was simple and elegant, he didn’t even need to beg. Being powerful, the weak give themselves.

The Sightless Cult, reduced to ammunition for Lordship. The taste, the hunger, the Sightless King felt it. He claimed it. He was it. One step, one more step, and he would carve his own name into the heavens.

The evaporated blood, the blood the city’s defenders thought they boiled, gushed like an ocean. A tide came, a tide that destroyed even the most ancient of civilizations.

He was Primordial, he was—

A flash. A flicker. A glancing thought. Something stray, something foreign. Alien. It blanked out his thoughts, his expressions of godship. His future.

It was bland. Blank, even. A tightness made eternal. A false land, set in the boundary. The Void, he recognized, the place everything was.

White, black, white, black.

It sung to him, it sung to them. The Sightless King, Glenny Red. Monster, hero. Taker, stealer. Eye, chameleon. Powerful, adaptive.

And it was that last one the Sightless King held on to. It was what he noticed from the song. Distant, harmonious. The hum of a clarinet, the whistle of a flute, the triumph of a trumpet, the beat of a drum, the strum of a guitar, the roar of a harmonic.

He turned, every one of his countless eyes finding the source. It was a tunnel, a hidden connection in the sand. He had already used it to go after the one who stole from him, the one named Glenny. But now it was being used against him.

Adaptation.

He followed the tunnel, finding the boy standing in the distance beside one of the other usurpers, the axe wielder. No… that wasn’t right. Glenny stood beside two usurpers. One holding and playing a guitar, the other blowing into a harmonica.

Why— Why did the song call him so? Why did it egg on his rage and create a false narrative? Just what kind of song—

Black, white, black, white.

There it was again. Isolation. The Void appeared in his mind, causing every one of his countless eyes to blink. That moment, that true moment of blindness, gave way to creation. A spark, a tiny flame. It took and burned, soundless heat scorching through the Void.

Then a stick of pain.

The blink ended, and the Sightless King’s vision split. In two, in four, in countless numbers of— His vision came back, healed in fractions of a second.

What?

The question hung in the air as the music continued. He snarled, the sound coming from each of his eyes like belting goats thinking they were howling wolves. His vision narrowed, and now he only saw Glenny and his identical twin-friend. He needed to kill them, he needed to—

His magic reacted to his will, the fire of rage amounting to thoughtless action. He appeared before them, striking out with the doom of a soon-to-be Lord.

He missed, the boys teleported away, but a building was still destroyed. But before the first brick hit the ground, the Sightless King moved, reappearing beside the thief. Blood came to his call again, this time splitting like leaves on a branch. The attack covered as much surface area as possible, and yet, he still missed.

Rage took his lungs, and a mighty roar left his body. As windows rumbled and hatred spread, the song continued as Void pried at his last mental shields.

Glenny appeared before him, two daggers sticking out and thrusting. He didn’t attack fast, the strike having no chance of missing, for some reason. The blades entered the Sightless King before twisting. Then, like a doomsayer to a desolate realm, the Void reacted.

A chunk the size of Glenny himself disappeared from the floating monstrosity in an instant. He attacked again. Another chuck disappeared. And again. And again.

Five uses of the Void in total, each more grueling than the last. Finally, as he was about to do a sixth, a portal appeared below his feet and swallowed him whole.

But this time, Spencer didn’t put him somewhere else on the battlefield. He wasn’t repositioned to dodge a deadly attack. No… this time, Glenny appeared in a well-lit tent. Crowds of people streamed to and fro, the haunted screams of countless butchered warriors seeping around him.

A hand caught him on the shoulder. He spun, daggers reacting without pause. A golden pulse extended around the woman, deflecting his attack like it was nothing.

“Whoa there, friend,” the woman said, the tattoo on her hand of chiming bells animated and clanging. “No enemies here! You’re safe!”

Glenny went to dash away, to escape the woman’s grasp and return to the battlefield. He knew he was in the healers’ tent and he knew he didn’t need healing. But a golden power coming from the woman’s hand relaxed his muscles and weakened his knees.

He allowed himself to be sat down, to be eased into a bed. It was nice, it was peaceful. Glenny mustered up the courage to brush a lock of white hair from his eyes. The magic was soothing, but the silence he heard in his mind was even more soothing. And the best part was, he wasn’t using the power of the Void. He soon fell asleep.

The woman, however, got to work. Never, in her near centuries long time as a Champion, had she ever seen someone in such a dreadful condition. His organs had started to fail, his skin had started to die, his heart started to slow… but it was just that, “started to.”

The process never finished. Whatever death march the boy had been a part of ended, like whoever was torturing him had just… stopped.

It would take time to heal but there was no doubt in her mind that this boy would recover. And it wasn’t just her Lord whispering in her ear that solidified such a sentiment. It was that the boy’s body was starting to repair itself as well.

Jude stared at the heaping mess that was the Sightless King. He didn’t fully understand what he and Glenny had done, but between his music and Glenny’s Void power, they had done… something.

Honestly, Jude frankly had no idea what had just happened. One minute they were battling, the next he was suddenly playing the harmonica while his mirage was playing the guitar. It was almost like time had skipped.

And how did Glenny open that tunnel!? Jude had clearly felt it, the Sightless King’s presence in his mind!

“Was that what you’ve been living with all this time?” Jude whispered to himself. “That thing in your mind?”

He shuddered as his parents stepped up beside him. Diana and Roy Brown, his mother and father smiled triumphantly. A few steps away, his uncle appeared from the crowd coming over as well.

“Uncle Ray!” Jude screeched, bear hugging the man. “When did you get here!?”

A bloody cut crested the man’s face. “As soon as I could…”

The implication was obvious. Jude looked around, finding many, many dead bodies. It had been a well fought hard battle, but ultimately they had won.

Carmon appeared as well, as well as the two Royal Inquisitors who had started the battle. Glenny’s father was limping badly, but a quick gulp of one of those stolen healing potions fixed that right up.

“Spencer?” Carmon asked the open air. “Take me to Glenny, please?”

But the portal didn’t come. At least not for him.

Dozens of portals opened, hundreds over the span of a minute or two. The weak, wounded, or those wailing over the corpses of the dead were moved. Even Jude was eaten by a portal, thrust somewhere safer by Spencer.

But one never appeared for Carmon. A small portal opened beside his ear. “Ashford is—”

Spencer’s voice cut off, a figure emerging from the smoke and dust. He walked patiently, each footstep nipping at reality like waves eroding a beach. Every step, every chilling step, cloaked the army in a veil of ethereal light. Green, sickly green, pools of infinite hallowed aura wound through the men and women vowed to defend their city.

Through the transcendent second, no one moved, no one breathed. The man only walked, his aura casting not only a large shadow on the death and decay, but on the celestial naivete of the Lords who oversaw this battle.

The man looked hurt, but not because he was in pain. He was tired of it. Following the scripture, the will of his Lord, the confusion of misadventure and failed clutches at freedom.

But for now, he was nothing but a slave to those far more powerful than him.

He appeared beside the dying corpse of the Sightless King, shoving his arm into the mangled coffin of flesh and doom. With a lurching rip, Harbinger Ashford yanked out what made his temporary ally an ally to begin with.

The greedy essence of someone who knocked upon the doors of divinity.

He was glad.

Despite the death, this plan allowed for one more survivor. Princess, or rather, Queen Sybil Palemarrow was no longer needed. The essence that had befallen her was no longer part of the plan. No longer needed by the Undying Lord.

It may have been a key, but forging a new one wasn’t a big deal. Not when you had a blank mold.

And Ashford had all of that.

It was finally time to free himself, and his Lord in the process.