Chapter One Hundred and Eighty Two – 182"Do you have a problem with your duty, Acolyte?" Initiate Tilwen asked as he stepped further into his subordinate's personal bubble. He could see the twitch in the idiot's cheek as he attempted to master himself and failed; a scowl bloomed on the Acolyte's face.
"I ain't doin' your dirty work, Tilwen," the Acolyte fairly spat, his young face pinched in anger. "Why not lift your own arms for once?"
There was a hiss of breath from around him, and the Acolyte spared his compatriots a glance. They'd all pulled away from him. Tilwen smiled. He always enjoyed an opportunity to reinforce obedience.
"What a grand idea."
The slap came from nowhere, as far as the Acolyte was concerned. It laid him low faster than he could blink, and Tilwen loomed over the young man with all the menace of an oncoming storm. The Acolyte slurred something through a mangled mouth while blood dribbled from his nose and lips.
"Do you not appreciate my help?" Tilwen asked, a mocking smiling tugging at the corners of his mouth. Oh how he loved to put the new recruits in their place. It was his duty to drive his subordinates toward Strength and Purity, by any means necessary. Tilwen leaned closer, putting his face inches from the young man's own. "Before you speak again, I would recommend you think very carefully on your answer."
The Acolyte flinched at the Initiates movement, but otherwise remained silent. The idiot boy's eyes rolled in his head, as if he couldn't manage to focus on Tilwen's movements.
Eyes of Affliction.
Status Condition: Dazed
Tch. Children. Too weak by far to be serving the Pathless. He straightened up and pushed the Acolyte with a single foot. The boy fell, limp. How worthless.
"I trust the rest of you are fine with my orders?" Tilwen's words were met with a series of vigorous nods and sudden bustling about the corpses. "Good. Strip them of everything and pile it in the wagons."
"What...what of the bodies, sir?"
Tilwen gestured to an unused corner of the courtyard. "Throw them in the corner. I'll have them burned later."
When Inquisitor DuFont had selected Tilwen to go on this assignment, he had been eager to prove himself to her. She had been elevated by the Master Inquisitor himself after all, and her grip over the Order's forces was growing by the hour. Already the Acolytes and most other Initiates had thrown in with her vision of their cause, while a stubborn few sided with Inquisitor Heuthorn and the old guard. But Tilwen could tell the way the wind was blowing, else he'd never have made it to Initiate so early in life.
Now he and the others had secured their first mine shaft for use by the Order. The resources they had acquired here would go a long way toward preparing his forces for further battle against the loathsome heretics that plagued Haarwatch. Only a city rife with corruption would see such monsters erupt onto its streets, and the Inquisitors had made it plain that dangerous meddling with forbidden powers led to this sorry state.
Barely made it here in one piece, Tilwen thought with a snort of derision. Were it not for his leadership and discipline, it was likely the entire mission would have failed. Yet now they'd succeeded, even going so far as to drive off those damned Guilder scouts. Bastards likely are reporting back to their masters at the Wall, but they'll return to find this mine a fortress of the Inviolate Order. A bastion of Light among the dingy darkness in this city.
Tilwen smiled and let the overcast light bathe his upturned face. The day had begun with strife, but it would end in absolute triumph. It--
Tilwen opened his eyes. The courtyard was unchanged, but something...something was different. His senses were trying to tell him something, but the Initiate couldn't quite put his finger on it. For all the banging of loading crates, it felt quiet.
"AH!"
Tilwen spun, hearing and seeing chains of purple-white energy manifest from the air. "Mage! Engage your movement Skills!"
Fleet of Foot!
Without waiting for his men, Tilwen took his own advice. A crackling set of chains missed him by less than a span, so close he could feel the deathly chill in his bones. Feet blurring, Tilwen even managed to dodge the appearance of four silver spears, and instead watched as they impacted his Acolytes.
Fleet of Foot is level 52!
Dodge is level 44!
Three of the four were horrifically impaled, the clearly conjured metal punching through their armor as if it wasn't there at all and hurled them backward. The fourth missed the still-prone form of the Acolyte he'd scolded, the lucky bastard. All three impacted victims fell onto their asses several spans away, pinned to the ground.
"Show yourself, cowards!" Tilwen screamed as loud as he could, though his voice sounded muted among the tall buildings. The others would surely hear them and come running in a few moments. "Face me with honor under the Light!"
As the remainder of his Acolytes hurried to aid their fallen comrades, something exploded out of one of the nearby buildings. A pale form erupted from a glass window and into the courtyard. It was a man, with dark hair and simple linen clothing. Tilwen didn't hesitate.
Diurnal Reach!
Four bolts of shimmering, golden light coalesced in his grip and shot out with unerring precision. Diurnal Reach was one of the first light Mana Skills an Acolyte was taught, but Tilwen had practiced it for years, even going so far as to Temper with it at Apprentice Tier. The four bolts shrieked through the air, so high it escaped the range of his ears; the man stood, staring and raising a single hand at the Initiate as if dumbfounded.
Fool! Die by my hand, heretic!
Yet when the bolts reached the man, they simply...vanished.
What?
Half submerged in the tilted shadows, the man's eyes blazed like vivid sapphires. The man lowered his arm, and Tilwen swore he could see a ripple of golden light shudder down his throat before it disappeared from sight. As if...
As if he had eaten his Skill.
"F-fiend," the Initiate gasped. Then, louder to the rest of his men still recovering from the attack. "Fiend! Everyone! To arms!"
The explosion from behind caught Tilwen completely off guard. A surge of air Mana threw him off his feet and tore his Acolytes to bloody pieces. The Initiate tumbled forward, trying to keep his senses on the devastation behind him as well as the monster before him. The Fiend was gone however.
Where are Nieves and Alton? Those explosions...Far too late, Tilwen had a stroke of realization, just as the sound came rushing back like water draining from his ears. Illusion magic. HUERK!
Tilwen gasped in pain and looked down to see a black-scaled arm sticking out of his chest. Baffled, he followed it up and up, until he saw the jagged toothed grin of...of a monster.
"Mine," it snarled at him. Hate burned with azure light in its vile eyes.
Light flooded him, blessed and holy. The very core of his being swept through Tilwen's senses in a cascade of shimmering motes. It winked out, just as his Diurnal Reach before it, and there was darkness.
And then nothing at all.
You Have Killed Tilwen Goar, Initiate of the Inviolate Order!
XP Earned!
Felix stood above the Initiate, panting as if he'd just sprinted a damn mile. Power coursed through his channels, stolen Mana and Essence that deposited a storm of potency into his core. The temptation to eat the entire bastard was strong, something that Pit clearly felt was what the man deserved, but Felix held himself back. Perhaps he wouldn't have been able to before he'd Tempered the Skill, for even now it was like holding back the tide itself.
Ravenous Tithe is level 55!
Felix drained the man's Mana and left his body mostly alone. Bits of blood and flesh came along with the Mana, but he hadn't rendered the Initiate's entire body into smoke. He figured that, eventually, he'd have to take his Tithe without raising too many suspicions, so he might as well practice it now. He pulled his black-scaled arm from the rapidly cooling corpse and let his arm painfully revert back to normal flesh. With a grimace, Felix spat out a bunch of sharp fangs as his regular teeth regrew within his mouth.
Ugh. The worst. Pit chirruped in cheery agreement.
As the hot sensation of power poured through him, Felix looked around. They had scouted the immediate area before initiating their attack and had discovered no other teams within close proximity. Two buildings north, however, there seemed to be some activity and judging by how the Initiate had yelled at the end, they were close enough to hear their shouts. Thankfully, we've got Thangle. The man's Obfuscation Skill had proven just the element they needed to shut them down.
"Black teeth but that was brutal," said Gnome exclaimed as he hopped out of a nearby doorway. The others also filtered in from different vantages around the courtyard, with Evie alighting nearby like a ghost and Vess clomping hard to the dusty flagstones. "I can't believe you took them out before the demesne went down."
"Thanks go to Vess on that one," Felix grunted, flexing his hand as he focused on pressing all of his newly gained Mana down into his spinning core. Not the abyssal void at the center, but the bright outer edge. The stolen Mana burned away, bit by bit. "Those spears really did the trick."