“Just... keep the barrier,” Eira murmured through a shaking breath. With a free hand, she clutched her stomach as nausea burned her throat. She stared down below the hill, witnessing screams of pain and curses spread across the blood-soaked glade. The deafening clashes of magic brightened the cloudy evening skies.
”Hundreds of adventurers for a single person... The bounty was for a runaway girl, a lone priestess, dead or alive. Not… this." With a shaking breath, the long, curved staff slipped from her grasp. The rhythmic hum of the magical barrier behind wavered.
From the sidelines, she watched as lightning carved through the flesh of her comrades. The battlefield was torn apart by a writhing azure tendrils.
"What did I even get myself into? I wished for a bit of gold, not massacre." She whispered through tears, collapsing, bowing to the ground, shaking.
“What are you doing?! Stupid b—”
The man’s shout was cut off by a slam that shook the earth, followed by a wet, splattering sound. Electric crackles spread the heat and stench of burning flesh.
Eira’s body froze heavy, stiff. Trembling, she forced herself to lift her head just enough to stare death in the eye.
Reading on Amazon or a pirate site? This novel is from Royal Road. Support the author by reading it there.
The first thing she saw was a thin, twitching hand. A hand clutching something precious. Blackened, charred skin frozen in a death grip around the hilt of an obsidian sword. Lightning danced over the steel, as dark as night.
As she raised her gaze, her breath caught. In front of her, on all fours, crawled a gruesome beast. A fragile violet carapace clung to the burned ruin of a body, like a corset, barely holding it together. Three hypnotic sets of wings, translucent as stained glass, glowed on her back. The long, fluid azure tendrils crackled with lightning, growing out of what was a human hair before, now impaling a man beside her like a freshly caught boar for a feast.
But beneath the writhing tendrils, she saw something far worse than a beast. Something that stopped her heart. Eira could only stare, frozen, at the one thing she seemed to comprehend: a girl’s face.
The right side was gone. Devoured by a jagged horn of raw flesh and splintered bone, erupting from where an eye had been. The other, still untouched left half, was just the face of a girl slightly younger than herself. A face staring back with a piercing azure eye brimming with… fear.
Tears streamed down Eira's face, falling on her trembling lips.
"Forgive us, Merzo, for straying from your guiding path in our foolish ambition. Forgive us for wounding your apostle in our greed."
The azure eye twitched. For a fleeting moment, Eira saw a flicker of empathy in the staring eye. She dared to hope for salvation, for forgiveness, as the girl's lips slowly parted, releasing a crackling, spark-laden breath.
With growing warmth inside her heart,
Eira opened her mouth.
“I’m sor—”
The word was cut by a screeching shout.
With a lightning strike that split the crowd.
Eira’s head fell to the ground.
A barrier sealed,
Doomed mass inside.
The madness slowly reached its peak.
Let sacrifice begin
My godhood feast.
