BECMI Chapter 134 – The Cost of a Curse

The many she had used that had turned Princess Brittabelle from a relatively normal combatant into a physical paragon of the elvish people had certainly helped her confidence in pursuing the Warrior’s Road, giving her a strength and power in combat, as well as the endurance to keep going, that she’d never possessed before. The relentless training in bow and bladework had made her lethally dangerous, and now these beastfolk, beastials, were experiencing the results of her training being put to the test.

A red-skinned brute with a lizard’s head snapped at her, and whispered across the back of its neck, severing its spine and dropping it in a whisper of motion.

Belle was good, but she could be better, and she knew it.

She only had to watch Edge at work and realize that in terms of mindset, she still had far to go.

The Marks showed Edge’s mind as cold, clear, crystalline Gold, so focused and intent that it made the older elfin shiver to look upon it, leashing some emotional storms with an icy fury that was all sheathed razors. The commitment and the drive behind her decisions, even if they often took strange appearances, were always to higher causes… and they were unapologetic and absolutely committed.

When she made up her mind, Edge was terrifyingly ruthless and focused, and that played out here.

Edge’s voice echoed across the Markspace, cool and unmoved and paying attention to everything. The spell she had up extended for hundreds of feet in all directions, letting her know where everyone, friend or foe or monster laying in ambush, was. The edges of it fluttered at the edges of vision, outlining everyone in the Colors of their souls if they cared to look, the harsh and ugly Reds, Purples, and Blacks of the beast-folk standing out among the lighter hues of the Free Company and the Delvers.

Mixed with that was the spell that was connected to every single soul that was accompanying her, letting her know distance, direction, and health mental and physical of everyone she was working with. It allowed Edge to reach out through the magic with a Healing Reserve whenever it was needed, or another minor spell if required.

Edge was doing all that as her Staff shattered the skull of what looked to be an orange neo-goblin with horns, crushed the knee of a squat, powerful brute that resembled an ogre on a goblin’s legs, and then swirled to break the Black brute’s neck as he stumbled and fell down next to her, like slaughtering a steer.

Fighting, sensing everything, giving directions, dispensing Healing, doing it all at the same time, and killing without remorse, hesitation, or let-up.

She moved from one group to the next, the Colors of their souls blaring at her, even the youngest of the Bestials already instinctively vicious, savage, and untrustworthy.

There was no glory. Belle watched Edge kill over and over again, swift, ruthless, taking no glory and less satisfaction in the task, but never refusing to do that killing, never backing down, always pressing forward to do what she was sent here to do. She did not fault anyone hesitating to kill females, children, even babes, but she did not hesitate to do so herself.

And yet she took no delight in it, no sadistic appreciation of pain and blood. If anything, the sad resignation of the task hung around her, sometimes almost radiating from her… but it didn’t stop her or slow her down in the least.

Edge hated the necessity of the task, but had already committed to seeing it through, and so that was what she was doing.

Even the ones who hated the beast-folk the most, and Belle had to count herself among that number, could only watch as Edge slew everything and anything in front of her. Vivus bloomed in white edges to black flames, corpses fell apart and fed the Land beast-folk, their pets and war-beasts, and the random creatures who preyed upon them alike.

Heroes, champions, chiefs, warriors, hunters, trappers, skulkers, sentries, guards, workers, child-watchers, males, females, children… they all died.

There was only one chance at mercy… if a grown beast-man had an Aura that was not Red, Purple, or Black.

If that was the case, Edge would simply point for them to go, and allow them to flee. If they attacked regardless, defending their family, she killed them swiftly and surely, her lips turned down, but did not extend mercy beyond the one chance.

This was War upon Evil, and the very goal was the genocide and extermination of their enemies.

Princess Brittabelle could not see how it was not going to happen, because they were killing far faster than the population of beast-folk could possibly grow. The more beast-folk they ran into, the faster they died, and Edge’s had already mapped out the entire world. She knew where they were, and she led them to hunt them down.

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Behind her, joining tunnels closed or were reduced to cracks or pipes only the smallest of creatures, wind, or water could come through. Edge had informed them that none of these caverns were originally natural, carved out by ancient and malevolent creatures at the orders of Immortals, and had even shown them the tunnels leading down towards the core of the world and the mantle of molten lava far below them.

The whole world, eaten through like worms devouring apples, or ants tunneling to and fro through the sand.

What kind of creature could make tunnels like these, some as large as cities or even forests, with their own unique buried ecosystems?

“Rest.”

Her Magevoice carried to everyone. The ones aware of the Markspace had seen the teams moving closer to cover one another, and knew it was coming. Combats were ended, but instead of pressing further into the darkness mapped out in front of them, and the survivors fleeing into it, the surface dwellers pulled silently back.

The Lady Edge had already cleared off an area of stone into level ground, surrounded it with a short wall, and raised an illusion over it to hide it from the sight of anything outside those walls. Niches in the stone could take bedrolls, packs, and as they watched a depression in the stone deepened, filling with water from a runoff stream, and would become a pool they could bathe and clean up in… not that the first thing Edge did when they all stole silently into the place was swirl magic over them and remove all the blood, guts, gore, and grime from them of a day of hard battle.

Still, it felt good to bathe.

And as everyone carefully relaxed and meals were brought out to eat ravenously, Edge moved to the back of the place and held the funeral rites.

Rites, for over a thousand beast-folk slain and left to Burn down to white dust and vivus behind them.

Few of them could truly resist the soft chanting in a guttural language that changed with every beast-folk who uttered it, yet was undeniably something coarse and threatening, vaguely unnatural, the root of orc and goblin and gnoll, kobold and ogrish tongues, all of which Brittabelle knew and had learned in the future.

Magic swirled out, magic tied to the Staff Edge bore. A Staff that recorded her responsibility for each and every slain soul during this killing purge, and called to those souls now.

They were angry, and resentful, and yet in both pain and fear as they slowly materialized out of the endless darkness. Their spirits were caught for that precious moment between life and death, deliberately held there by the power of Mnecromonic nature, forever recorded in the bone and crystal of the Staff.

Black and white mists of mana swirled around Lady Edge as she faced down the dead she had led the slaughter of. Behind her, the Free Company and the Delvers gathered to face them, some with faces twisting at the sight of what they had done, some grim, some uncaring, and a few even satisfied.

“This was your Doom.”

Her voice rippled over the trapped spirits, silencing their cries, reverberating with Truth, and they had no choice but to listen to her.

“Your souls were taken from their rest and put into this life. Perhaps it is a just punishment for what you did in your last life. Perhaps it is the whim of an uncaring Immortal who needed savage souls to fuel their pet project and create your race.

“Regardless of that, you have lived this life of savagery and misery, and it is done. You face but one final choice now.

“You have served and faced your punishment, and now you can choose to let it go. Your life is done, you may return to the Land and rest. If you are reborn again, your Karma is wiped clean, and you may be reborn as anything the Land may put you in… but it will not be as beast-folk.

“Or, you may hold onto your rage and hate, and be re-born as beast-folk once more, slaves to an uncaring Immortal, your punishment to continue in your next life as it was squandered in this one.

“Choose, and be gone. Back to the Immortal who condemned you to this life, or to the Land, and whatever the future may hold, free of your past. It is your last choice, so choose!”

The mists billowing about her rose and swept quietly for the summoned souls. Flashes of unwhite fire billowed and shot through the blackness of the mist as the thousand and more souls there faced the incoming mists in silence and perhaps fear… but the final choice was still their own.

The mists cleared a moment later, glitters of whiteness sparkling here and there on the dark stone. Of the spirits that had gathered at her call, there was no sign.

How many had made which choice was something nobody knew, save perhaps Edge herself, and she did not speak of it.

The raiders with her moved silently back to their places. Even those who took great satisfaction in the killing of the beast-folk said nothing and made no jokes about those souls.

If being reborn as a beast-man was punishment for sins committed, then did that apply to them and the deeds they were performing even now?…

We went down, we wiped a cavern, cleared the tunnels leading into it, and I sealed those tunnels. Some surviving beast-folk fled before us, carrying word, carrying fear, carrying tales of blood and souls and a haunting funeral dirge playing, the stone, reverberating before them.

There was no place for them to hide. The very Land was giving up them and their locations, knowing they were not born of it, that Immortal power had created them… and as they fell and died, it drank in that Immortal power, and such strengthened the Land.

They fled into the darkness, into the silent tunnels that they thought could hide them, the nasty creatures that dwelt there that they knew of and thought they could lure to us, unleash on us.

The Land told me about those, too, and knowing they were there, even if not exactly what, we killed them all when they came, too.

The amount of Healing Reserve used and spells wielded by human and elven Casters alike, as well as Revered Cruxin, was constant and full, keeping everyone in the fighting, saving them from death, and giving them a staying power they had never experienced before.

We killed, we killed, and we killed, wiping an area clean, withdrawing, and then coming down somewhere else in the perimeter, where alarms had not really spread, and we reaped some more.