Curselock

Chapter 217: It Is Time

In a twist of fate, the Witch who toyed with fate, died thinking herself invincible. At least, that was how Ashford understood the situation. It was nearly time, and Charlotte had missed the last three check-ins.

She was dead, Ashford was certain. She had always toyed a little too much. Still, he couldn’t say he would miss her. People called him a monster, but she was something far beyond, she was a Witch. The amount of lives one has to take, in cruel means, to be branded as a Witch was obscene.

Ashford would know, people have tried, and failed, to get the Lords to brand him before.

He sat alone in a dusty room, legs hanging off the bed with his elbows on his knees and fingers interlaced just below his chin. Normally, the posture would cause the next morning to be painful, he wasn’t a young man any longer, but now? Now Ashford was closer to a Lord than a mundane human.

Being reborn just wasn’t a good enough description of the transformation he had undergone. His body and organs had literally burnt from the inside out, regrowing instantly with the fuel from the parasitic soul Sovereignty.

Transcended was closer, but he was still a few steps from reaching for divinity.

But it was almost time.

The Sightless King would move soon, and so would he.

The Sightless King, posing as an ordinary soldier, tasted the spoonful of mush the army cooks were serving. He was uncaring of the prying eyes from the others, for they were nothing but bugs he would soon crush.

In reality, it was the Sightless King himself that ambushed the unit, and it was the Sightless King that was the “sole survivor.” Oh how easy it was to trick humans with hope. They always accepted the outcome if there was a sliver of hope mixed in with the terror.

Like a single surviving soldier. They accepted him with open arms because that was just how mortals were.

And now he ate their food. Inspected their ranks. Watched them do battle. He didn’t speak, he didn’t growl. He didn’t even jump at the weaklings, killing them before they could kill some of his… followers.

The cult was a mistake.

If the Sightless King could do it all over again, he’d find a different way to reach Lordship. Why? Because no matter how many followers he had, no matter how much territory he claimed, the world only saw him as a monster.

And it was true. He almost added a few drops of blood to the mush he was served for dinner. But hiding the fact he was a monster was easy. Just look at him now. Sitting in the midst of the very army he’s about to destroy.

He sighed, setting down the spoon. It was almost time—

“Corporal Cruz?”

The Sightless King paused, slowly turning his head toward the man talking. He blinked, finding the Palemarrow insignia for Captain.

“They told me you are the only surviving man from your unit,” the Captain said, taking a seat beside the Sightless King. “I’m sorry for your loss. And I’m sorry to bring this up so soon, but we need to know the details. Who attacked you, how you survived, their powers, etcetera.”

Slowly, the human flash suit the Sightless King wore smiled. The gesture was foreign to the King, but moving muscles was all the same in some fashion or another. He then nodded, his silence not going unnoticed.

The Captain bristled slightly. “You… okay, son? I know—”

The smile elongated, stretching far into Corporal Cruz’s cheeks. Toofar. Skin split, blood pooled but did not leak, instead only beading up. Just like blood from a dead body.

The Captain stumbled to his feet, Cruz tilted his head. Alarm, that was all there was. That was all there could be. He had to warn, he had to yell.

“Enemy in the cam—”

The words died in the Captain’s mouth as the taste of blood attacked the back of his throat. Limply, his hands shot forward, a last ditch effort to repel the sudden attack. But his hands only found a spike. A thick pointed arm, one that connected to the mangled Corporal Cruz and now jutted out the back of the Captain’s neck.

Luckily, people had been watching. Screams sounded first, then the might of the Palemarrow army began to work.

The last thing the Captain heard before death took him, was alarms sounding through camp.

The Sightless King tossed the body aside, a trail of blood following the mass of flesh. He turned, unveiling his true self from the cover of his meat suit. His limbs grew in length, his torso doubled, even tripled, in size. Eyes formed on his back, sides, and chest, before conjoining into a single bloodshot glare.

He began to float, and the army began to attack.

It was time.

With the backdrop of a moonless night, malevolent doom shuddered through the army camp. Silhouettes, each rounded and thick with blood and pus, rose over the cooking pots and field tables. Shadows flickered from mana lights and torches, though the beast didn’t need what little light there was to see. No, in fact, despite being a massive eye, the Sightless King did not see.

A hush befell the men and women who looked at the monster, their skin prickling like millions of tiny eyes glared at them from the darkness. They quivered, some even falling outright to their knees, their jaws locked tight.

As it rose through the air, some fought back, some tried to intervene. But all attacks were blocked with simple recourse. Some observed, others defeated by darkened primordial energy. Arrows, swords, hammers, all sundered against the Sightless King’s authority.

Panic spread, the most fearful running despite the orders from their commanding officers. Magic rained down, hellfire and ice clashing like two terrors desperate for blood. Alarms sounded, but the shrill squeal of the dead outweighed all.

“Regroup! Regroup!” someone shouted, her commands well above her rank, but all still listened.

The army roused, their camp abandoned and yet they still stood nearby. They gathered in ranks and in structure, their enemy now known and now understood. Leaders were born in those short moments before the Sightless King strolled down the street, darkness licking at its coattails.

“Fire!” one shouted, executing the will of her nation.

Legacies of all kinds came together in that moment, a single moment of pure destruction. Before the night’s events, the area had been evacuated for the army. There would be no innocent casualties in this, for there was only one living being in the crossfire.

The Sightless King continued forward, killing soldiers with just his gaze. A beast he was, a monster he was, but a terror he always had been. The air misted with blood, the ground flooded with the liquid. Fires grew and took a foot hold, the city’s ruin all but guaranteed.

Then, a rush of leaves filled the space just before the mass of soldiers. They appeared together, the spell’s teleportation ability limited in scope and precedence. But they made it, and in time to hear gasps of pride.

Behind them, the soldiers whispered their names.

Lead foot out, High Inquisitor Gwinn flicked his scimitar forward, his partner, High Inquisitor Crane, summoning enough leaves to fill a forest.

They attacked in unison, sword and leaves dancing with one another until laceration the size of forearms began to appear on the Sightless King. Blood spilled from their attacks, though neither were foolish enough to believe they were making any progress.

Reports had come in about who the Sightless King was believed to be. The Bloodied Eye, a monster primordial and perverse in nature. A creature centered around curt aspects of death and greed. A Guardian Spirit Beast of a twisted land with demented cultists to supply him infinite worship and reach.

The blood spilling from the massive eye then twitched, stabbing out like a lance. It collided with Gwinn’s sword, shattering the curved blade with ease. The pieces fell around the Inquisitor, but he only smirked. Being a Legacy of Broken Pieces was sometimes tedious to work around, but when the enemy was a mighty being that only knows destruction? It made his job easier.

The broken scimitar, splintered into a dozen pieces, hovered slightly off the ground, each section held together by the very magic that made the Broken Lord known. Gwinn’s eyes turned hollow, power and mana welling until a new blade was created.

Thick and sharp, the pieces stacked one on top of the other until it was larger than the Sightless King himself. Each piece glowed with a different hue, pink, yellow, blue, green, and so on, each housing different magic within.

Leaves poured from his side, Inquisitor Crane’s ammunition peppering the Sightless King back. Each leaf, each weapon, sliced through the air, battling the nightmare back. They moved like swirling sand, rushing to protect as well as decisively moving to kill.

Together the Inquisitors attacked as one, a broken sword and countless leaves carved into the Bloodied Eye until they hit bone.

A rip of crimson caustic energy squelched out of the wound, a single detonation of pure ancient anger. Both Inquisitors were thrown back, but quick thinking and decades of expertise allowed them to keep their lives.

The Sightless King chuckled, two wide arms made entirely of blood now holding the broken blade.

“Interesting weapon,” he said, snapping it like a twig. “A shame—”

Despite being blind, the Sightless King could still see. Every flicker of movement, every petrified face of those too weak to even acknowledge. He saw it all, and reveled in everything.

But a familiar blue ring of magic stopped him cold. Portal magic, from one of the parents of the children he loathed so much.

All according to plan.

What better way to finalize his Lordship than to eat his most arch of nemeses. It was a shame that the title befell three children, however.

From the portal stepped a child, then another, and a few of adults. The Sightless King gave them no heed, focusing solely on the one who stole from him. The one that would die first, and the most painfully. The one called “Glenny.”

The Sightless King laughed, his mangled voice echoing against the burning city. Then with a flare of power, he called upon the sigil that burned in every single member of his family. The crimson sigil, the very aspect of his power that allowed for conquest and the very sigil that still remained in Glenny.

“So you’ve come to me?” he asked, crimson light appearing throughout the city, each family member glowing like a lighthouse in the night. “Should have stayed away, child.”

Glenny began to glow for but a second, the crushing nothingness of the Void wiping away whatever primordial recounting the Sightless King held. His eyes turned white, then black, then white. All the while he stared at the monster in his nightmare.

He stared at the Sightless King.

It was time.

Time to end this.

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