Four Horsemen: Chapter 14

Chapter 14:

The bells had reached the cathedral, guards and priests were rushing everywhere within the compound surrounding the cathedral.

A man leapt out of the cathedral, the air cracking at his passing, glowing with celestial mana.

That’s a lot more mana than he had before.

“What was that?” Carl asked.

“I think that was Berox.”

“Miss, what is going on?” An alchemist asked the female priest.

“Champion Berox has ventured forth to meet the enemy champions,” She said.

“But those bells sound like they’re inside the city?” Desari asked.

“The faithful will stand strong.”

“I just want to check on my family.” An alchemist asked.

The room started to crowd forward, closer to the priest and her guards.

“We have the lord’s work to complete.” She raised her hands, a fervor building in her voice a shine to her eyes.

“We don’t know if our families are safe and our businesses,” Desari pitched her voice so as to not stand out.

“My daughter is only three she’ll be worried.”

“I’ve built my business up from the ground. I have to check on my shop.”

Alchemists stepped forward, worries fuelling and filling their minds.

Desari slipped out bits of grey and silver putty into the fires under cauldrons and different alchemical equipment. Everyone focused on the priestess.

“All will be fine, our belief in Lord Jorai will be rewarded!” The woman yelled, her face turning red and splotchey white. Alchemists held a high position in society and were used to getting their own way.

“Alchemy fire!” Someone yelled out. Fires sparkled and streamed out smoke, quickly spreading throughout the room from a dozen different places.

Some threw water, others sand and joined the others rushing the doors. Smelling an alchemical gone wrong was a quick way to end up dead.

“It’s locked!”

Desari touched the wall away from the door, weakening the stone around the hinges.

With a crack and groan, the door fell forward with other alchemists who rushed out of the room.

“Get back here! We have the Lord’s work to do! Guards!” The female priest’s yells turned to coughing in the smoke.

“What do we do now?” Kat asked, looking around wildly Carl looked between groups running in either direction.

Desari held up her hand, spotting a blue smoke leaking under a doorway. Alchemists ran through it, the smoke rose up, a few coughed and spat, falling to the floor.

“Poison,” Desari turned, studying the halls.

“Why would there be poison?”

“Halt!” Guards yelled ahead of the other group, holding onto their blades.

“There is a fire! Watch out poison!” An alchemist yelled.

The guards seemed unaffected, drawing their blades.

“Come on,” Desari ran down the hallway.

“Halt or we’ll use force!”

“We’re alche-“ The man coughed as the sword slashed through his robes, the guards advanced with grim looks. Blades turned bloody as they corralled the alchemists.

The bodies started withering, like old parchment and turning to dust.

Desari turned down a corridor.

Kat let out a scream, Carl dragging her as they ran after Desari.

“Halt!” three guards turned down the corridor.

Desari drew and flicked two blades, slamming home into the men’s throats, the third looked at them as they choked and grabbed at the blades.

Desari drew her sword from her hairpin storage device.

He threw a hasty slash at her with his sword.

She deflected his sword, turning and slamming her elbow into his head. He stumbled backwards. Arcing his back with a yell as her mana infused blade cut through his armor and back.

He dropped to the floor, Desari slashed through the back of his neck with her sword.

Desari pulled out her daggers. Carl and Kat stayed back watching her with wide eyes.

“Not just an alchemist.” She cleaned her weapons on the guard’s clothes, checking the corridor.

Valter is that way, Mya and Petor are in between us.

She took off in their direction. A glance back showed Carl and Kat following her. Well they’re smart at least.

She lowered her shoulder and crashed through a door.

A priest sitting at a desk held a potion in mid-air.

Desari’s dagger pinned him to his chair. He screamed out, dropping the potion, a second dagger stuck the other shoulder to the chair.

“Close the door,” Desari yelled. The bells covered some of the screams thankfully.

Windows lay behind the man’s desk.

She peeked through to the cathedral remains beyond, across was the barracks and around it all was the rubble wall. Ballista were grouped together, facing down the roads that led out of the city.

“That’s the head priest,” Kat said.

The door to the room slammed shut.

“Oh gods,” Carl said, pale and sweating.

Desari shifted around one of the daggers in the man’s shoulder. He cried out in agony.

“Good, I have your attention. What is your plan?”

“Jorai will smite thee witch!”

Desari  worked the blade around again.

“What’s the poison and soul ingredients for?” Desari looked through the windows. Mya and Petor rode into the compound to drop off supplies and pick up others.

“What are you doing with the poison you’re spreading throughout the city?” Desari held out her hand, wind gathered around the potion bottle on the floor and lifted it up to her waiting hand.

“Give me that!”

Desari hit the back of a dagger, seating it in the man’s shoulder up to the hilt with a cry timed along with the loudest of bells.

“Enough enough!” Tears stained his robes and face.

“Speak priest.”

“The mission here to raise Jorai has failed, the other gods learned of our secrets and they will destroy the city, everyone in it and take the means for our lord’s material incarnation.”

“Your using the poison to kill off everything and everyone within the city, that way no one loses.”

She flicked the hilt of the nearest dagger when he took too long.

“Yes!”

“Then the soul stuff, you’re stealing souls?”

“Yes, to grow our lords power.”

“Kill the faithful and your enemy, harvest the souls and mana to power Jorai up.” Desari swirled the remains of the potion and chugged the remains down.

“Why?” Kat asked.

“Power, those that have it are loath to release it and ever eager for more.”

Desari tore out a dagger, the head priest crying out. She flipped the dagger and drove it through the vertebrae in his neck. He twitched and went still.

“By Jorai,” Kat said breathlessly.

“Dunno if I would be praying to the guy that’s about to sacrifice your whole city just so he doesn’t lose.”

Thunder rolled and shadows shifted down in the city.

“Berox is fighting the other champions.” She opened her eyes to the mana and looked at the head priest.

She took off his medallion and looked inside.

She threw a potion at Carl and Kat each. “Those are the antidotes.” She withdrew several pieces of paper covered in runes and formations. “Mya and Valter will want to see this.”

She dropped the medallion into a pouch, the gold jewels, furniture and other items could be useful later.

The Head priest, his chair and the dagger went into another storage device.

He and his guards pushed my core right next to yellow. She grimaced, a few more potions and she’d be there.

Dust rose out of the barracks, guards shifted and ran around.

More dust rose in several locations.

Valter smashed through a wall, he shook of the stone rubble and pointed at the cathedral to Mya and Petor.

Desari pulled on her armored vest, then arm and leg bracers. She wrapped her face and pulled up her hood.

“Good luck,” Desari stepped forward, touching the glass window. It shattered as she stepped into the open air, wind wrapped around her. She glided down next to Petor who threw off his farmer’s garb.

“Good to see you.”

“Jorai intends to kill everyone within the city and then steal their souls.”

“Only person allowed to steal souls is me,” Mya said, pulling on her hat and jogging for the cathedral.

Petor pulled on his helmet. “I thought my last life was hectic.”

Desari ran with them. “Why did you come?”

“Well we’re the four horsemen right?” Mya asked.

“Figured it’d be more fun up here with you two,” Petor said.

They reached Valter as they reached halfway to the cathedral. A dozen guards stepped out, creating a line.

“Carved the altar in the undercroft with formations to draw in souls. The altar’s apparently not just for show. Might be some kind of teleportation device from the other planes. Something enters the altar, then mana is poured in and then its all directed somewhere,” Valter said, drawing his arbalest.

“Head priest said something about the altar being used to create a material body. I guess he was trying to skip a few steps to attain true godhood.” Desari drew her bow, running her fingers along the string checking for burrs.

“I have so many questions,” Petor whirled his sling.

“I have some answers!” Mya’s pistols crack-BOOMED.

Two guards were thrown back. Petor’s sling blurred, the sound of stone shattering on metal laid another low.

Valter’s Arbalest, pinned one to a column behind him as he reloaded with the sound of straining metal wire.

Desari whispered to the arrow upon her string, drawing and releasing, three shot forth, two formed of wind, the third guided by it.

The guards rushed them, none of them got into range to use their melee weapons before the horsemen put them down.

Their bodies withered and crumbled in on themselves, drifting towards the cathedral.

“Store their gear, loot!” Mya said.

Desari reached out with her hand, storing the gear, leaving withered bodies on the street.

Valter drew sword and shield, Petor his spear. Mya drew her sword. Desari checked behind her.

Guards coming from the defenses were met with freed prisoners trying to escape.

“I am going to see this altar to see if what I think I know is actually the answer you need,” Mya said.

Desari slipped forward just behind Valter as they reached the tunnels.

Priests looked up from the altar holding chisels.

Valter cut down one holding a box of potions, sending them crashing to the ground.

Mya’s pistol’s cracked taking out two as Desari shot across the open ground. Her blade cut through the air and their robes with barely any resistance.

They staggered around, never having been on the front lines, instead using their gods blessings and miracles from afar.

Desari drew her sword out of the last priest. He hit the altar, covering it in his blood as he dropped to the floor, as his life slipped away his body it began to wither.

His very soul, essence, mana and self were ripped away by the altar.

“Ouuf this is rough,” Mya muttered, walking around the carved floor, absently reloading her pistols, her eyes flickered over different sections, stepping over the silver filling.

“Used the cities silver on this I reckon.”

Valter kneeled, picking up tools from a dead priest. “Petor grab that box over there.”

“Got it,” Petor picked it up and carried it over.

Desari turned her attention on the altar.

“Bottom right has the destruction formation they added in, an output, the center is where the power from somewhere else is supposed to come from. The back of the altar towards the mountain has a directional output. I think there is more of the formation under the ground. There are four layers to the altar.”

“One of the most complex I’ve ever seen,” Desari said.

Valter stepped up next to her.

“Yeah its something alright, would love to spend some time taking it all in.”He looked at her sideways. “Maybe there is a way.”

He took out a book of metal, flicked it open and placed it on the altar. A blueprint started to carve itself into the metal book, flipping through pages as it ran out of space.

What kind of artifact is this? She caught Valter’s eyes, he tapped his nose and winked.

“So what do you think of it?”

Desari pressed her teeth together.

“Where you want it?” Petor held up the box Valter had asked him to grab.

Valter rifled around taking a pouch, then shrugged and collected several tools.

“Don’t need the rest, I’d say keep it.”

“And there still be loot on the priests,” Mya said.

“Well this big surrounding formation it connects with the other formations that are being made throughout the city, it drags in mana and souls, this silver has been made with ingredients that interact with the soul.”

“This has been altered,” Desari pointed at the formation that was supposed to pull power from somewhere. She looked at Valter. He shrugged picking up his book that had stopped flipping pages.

“Is it just pulling in power here or sending it away?” Mya moved up to the altar.

Desari pierced through the veil, looking at the mana all around. A shiver ran down her back at the sheer amount of mana pouring into the altar, each second it increased.

A stream of pure mana formed above the altar and slammed into the central formation. Much smaller slips of mana like small vapors travelled through the floor-carved formation, up the side of the altar and into a secondary formation around the main one.

The streamers increased in frequency, blending together. Each a life, each a soul. Desari studied the outside of the altar.

A single formation on the back gushed mana, it looped around the altar and shot out towards the cathedral and the city beyond.

“I have an out, its much more compressed than what’s coming in.”

Petor moved away, back to the tunnel from the cathedral, picking up the priest’s gear as he went.

“They were trying to fill in the last part of the destructive formation that would detonate the altar,” Valter said.

“Okay this is weird,” Mya said.

Her eyes were the milky white of the dead and damned as she moved around the altar.

“This main formation here it is pulling from just one soul, and then the output that’s linked to another single soul. The secondary hacked together formation connects to the formation on the ground to draw in other souls.”

Mya tapped the formation at the rear of the altar gushing out power. “Yeah, okay very weird, this soul, its really damn similar,” She stood up and tapped the soul in the middle of the altar. “To this soul. And it is a soul. Who the hell needs this much power? Who could take it in and not explode?”

“Well god’s champions could,” Petor yelled over, eyes focused on the tunnel.

Mya snapped her fingers. “That’s it! The soul of a god’s champion is altered by their connection to their god. They are a conduit for them basically It allows them to perform miracles and magic well above what they should be able to do. Cheating fucks.”

“These runes,” Desari locked onto a section. “This is linking to a celestial realm.”

“Material body,” Valter looked at the hallway going deeper into the mountain. “Originally there were pictures on the wall, they depicted light hitting the mountain, people were prostrated infront of the altar, then there were four people standing in front of them.”

Valter rapped his armored knuckle on the altar.

“There are stages to a god. Divinity, demigod, god and then over god. To go from demi god to god, one needs to have a material body, it allows them to greatly increase their power and they can then descend to the material plane much easier.” His hand stilled, his eyes focusing on Desari. “Bodies that need a soul.”

“Our bodies?”

Mya clicked her tongue. “That would make sense. We were souls in need of a body, what better than hijacking a few?”

“This altar was supposed to allow a god to descend, go through the altar and be put into one of the bodies,” Valter said. “The runes that would accept the god draw instead of just accepting.”

“Berox is sucking up Jorai and the people in the city and making that power his own,” Mya said.

“When we first saw him he was mounted on his horse riding into the city. The second time he called down thunder over hundreds of meters. Now he’s flying and taking on two other god’s champions,” Desari said. “Petor, could that work?”

“I’m not sure? Though god’s are known to use people as avatars right?”

Vessali’s twisted voice of several other trying to speak at the same time rose in her mind.

“Being a champion allows you great access to your gods power and in turn them to you,” Desari nodded.

“He’s already got a material body, if Berox was to suck up everyone’s souls and then the power of Jorai, he could become a god himself,” Valter said.

Mya scratched her head, like a damn soul chest but tearing everything out of everyone. “Hell, I bet that he would get the devotions from others that believe in Jorai. Just a new manager in the celestial realm.”

“That’s cool and all, but what we going to do about it?” Petor asked.

“This’ll create the kind of diversion we need to get out of here,” Valter said, patting the altar.

“We pull the feed on Berox and he’s gonna know, meaning he’s going to run his ass up here to fight us. We stop pulling the power from Jorai and he gains consciousness, then he’s probably going to smite the shit out of us,” Mya said.

“Keep consuming Jorai, shunt the power into something new. Berox will run up here. I can fight him for some time if Petor charges me up,” Valter said.

“I can create an elemental summoning ritual,” Desari said.

“I can raise the dead,” Mya said.

Desari paused. “That might be better, the elementals are wild.”

“The dead I can give them limited commands. Attack people wearing certain pieces of gear. Have them listen to commands from a few people, like Helena, Clemens and anyone that they okay,” Mya said. “Also we got plenty of bodies here.”

“What do you need?” Desari asked.

“I can lay down the ritual on the ground you help me make it. Valter I’m going to need you to link into the ritual.” Mya moved away to a part of the floor not covered in silvered inscription.

“Can do, we can use the output going to the destructive inscription,” Valter said. “I modified it a bit already.”

“And I just have to stick my spear into celestial crazy,” Petor muttered, moving towards the altar.

“Give me a hand with the runes first. Once you stab that thing.” Valter pointed at the pillar of divine mana with a carving tool. “Berox is going to know something is up.”

“Tell me what you need.”

“Just carve out what I write, I’ll check on it.” Valter roughed in some cuts on the altar, Petor cutting them out.

Mya wrote on the ground in chalk. Desari tapped on the ground, the chalk lines and runes sunk into the ground before she pulled out a pot of black ink and poured it in, solidifying into an onyx like material with a shock of mana.

“That works.” Mya said.

“How strong you think Berox is?” Petor asked, his voice quiet but the whole room was quiet.

“Rare, maybe Epic. Celestial power doesn’t follow the same rules as mana or essence,” Valter said, focused on his work.

“Be the second legend I’ve killed.” Petor half shrugged and kept working.

The power of their cores constrained what they could do. Valter and Mya were both working on Epic works without a pause or hesitation.

She’d always taken a secret pleasure at being the strongest or most competent in the room. Having others that were equally able. Part of her was excited, another apprehensive. Strength brought security.