Dyo’s purple eyes glowed as he locked eyes with the inquisitor and unsheathed his messer. He might have only learned a few basic moves and how to hold the thing from Shani and Ercole, but he wasn’t going to let it hold him back. Skill or not he wasn’t going to be taken alive.
Marcus’s eyes widened for a moment, his face caught in surprise before it hardened. “I won’t let your corrupted and foul words disrupt my faith daemon, I do what is required of me to save the people of this city and all of Charindom! But know this, unlike the many men you have seen before, I have the spiritual will required to withstand your unholy influence!”
“Unholy influence!?” Dyo almost spat out those words, “You just don’t want to face the fact that your work isn’t as clean or ho-“
“Shut up you filthy pagan fae!” He roared, whipping his staff around and gripping both hands around it. “You know nothing of the words of the almighty lord and the actions that have to be taken against things like you! Things whose very presence dirties the minds of those whom they contact and wield powers that reap unholy terror, and it is my duty to purge them! So, I will challenge you!”
The Inquisitor’s stance shifted, reaching out his staff and firmly grounding himself on the slick stone with his weapon pointed forward in a middle guard. On the staff, his hands started to grasp and trace the fragments of bone and scripture as he started a low, steady chant.
Dyo readied himself, sword in a side guard ready to sweep away any attacks and his other hand hovering across his torso like he had been taught, ready in the defence.
For a few moments they stood like that facing each other with only the sound of the rain and Marcus’s prayers filling the air on top of that tower.
Then the Inquisitor moved.
He lunged forwards, stepping forth while thrusting with his staff at a speed that should not have been possible for the greying man.
Dyo side-stepped right, barely avoiding it, before Marcus then whipped it towards the demigod’s still exposed gut. Even though it wasn’t travelling all that fast, the rod of ash lashed with reliquaries hurt. The blow forced most of the air out of his gut as he stumbled backwards, barely able to stand up straight.
He saw another strike incoming, an upward strike heading straight towards his sword arm. The staff flew through the air while he was still recovering and pushing with it a gush of air. A strike that would flow into another one, and then another one, and then another until he was a bleeding and broken husk on the ground if he did not act.
In his head, there was only one thing he could think of that could stop that.
He lashed out with his magic, forming it in a crude, but powerful replication of his father’s auditory hallucinations, creating a barrage of sound in the Inquisitor’s ears. There was nothing to the noise, just a howling screeching sound that shot down his nerves and made him falter.
Just the opening Dyo needed to recover and strike.
He swept upwards towards the Inquisitor’s arm with his blade, cutting through their white garments and into their arm with a rush of air. The cut was shallow, but it was enough to stain Marcus’s damp white robes red, the tang of iron mixing with the smell of the rain in the air.
The inquisitor’s face contorted with pain as he gritted his teeth but stayed steady as he snarled, “Daemonic magics won’t bring me down! Try as you might, my mind will resist!”
The staff swung towards Dyo yet again, but without the impeccable precision of before, that, when combined with another blast of sound, allowed Dyo to leap to the side again.
Quickly, he raised his blade up, just in time to catch the next staff strike. That gave him just enough time to try another thing his father taught him. Reaching into the Inquisitor’s eyes, he moulded his magic with a bit more skill this time into visions of gashes and clouds of fog that swam in his vision.
But even with all that, Marcus did not let up. He launched a barrage of wild attacks on Dyo, every moment occupied by a clumsy swing of the staff that the Demigod was able to either parry or dodge. Each successful block cut reinforced Dyo’s confidence and weakened the Inquisitor’s defence as splinters flew from the messer meeting wood, the staff now bearing the deep scars of every encounter.
Yet the assault did not stop, even as the waxed pieces of scripture were sliced and torn from the staff by steel until-
A loud crackling snap echoed above the sound of the pounding rain as one of the prized gold-encrusted reliquaries met its end at Dyo’s sword. The staff now frozen in its arc with the blade buried in it, dotted with drops of rain mixed with bone and gold dust, with Marcus staring dumbfounded at it.
Dyo took his chance.
Sliding it away from the staff he brought it around and upwards across the Inquisitor’s face. It cut across the top of his cheek, then into the bridge of his nose, before finally withdrawing with its tip coated in blood from the man’s brow.
It wasn’t deep, and it wasn’t clean, but it made the holy man roar with pain.
He stumbled backwards, his hand rushing to his face as he tried to keep his weapon up and ready with his left hand as blood ran down his face and dripped onto his white vestments. Red blood drawn by a pagan from an Arch Inquisitor stained the holy clothes.
“You…” He growled through gritted teeth, “You…”
“You challenged a son of the gods,” Dyo replied, a smirk spread across his face, “and got exactly what your hubris deserved.”
“Hubris!? Gods!? You, a foul pagan, should not dare to lecture me about theology or demean my duty to the one true god!”
He laughed, affixing Marcus with his glowing eyes, “Then you do know nothing about them! I am the son of Calsyniacus here in the flesh, a demigod! I have met Athervi eye to eye! But I bet you haven’t even had a true vision from Yaawha ever while claiming to be the one who’s divinely inspired!”
The Inquisitor’s eye was growing wild now, filled with manic desperation as the man behind it struggled to keep any composure, reciting psalms over and over again in his mind.
“If you’re so powerful and divine, kill me now with those magics that you used to turn my men into those unholy thorn bushes!” He cried out, splaying his hand out wide in the storm, affixing Dyo with both his eyes now. “Or am I too holy for your false gods’ powers to work on me!?”
The Inquisitor laughed, cackling at the top of his voice so as to almost, between it and the rain, mask the sound of thundering hooves approaching with a chorus of familiar yells. The sound of his rescue.
Dyo smiled.
“My father is the god of madness, wine, and amongst other things theatre. So, I’ll leave you something far more imaginative to remember your defeat by…”
And with that, he let his magic loose on the Inquisitor’s mind.
The entire world changed in Marcus’s eyes, lines shifting and melting as grape vines spread all across the walls and floor. The sensation of creeping and scratching covered his skin, his brain, and his lungs, even though none appeared on him as he scrambled to find them, each inhale bringing the stench of alcohol. All as voices and whispers filled his very mind from an unknown throng, their words almost indecipherable as they talked over each other. But one voice among the chaos stood out, a loud, mirthful chuckle that rang as clean and clear as crystal. A barrage of the senses that forced him to the ground with his mind practically screaming for relief from the assault.
A raw scream that spilled from his lips as a desperate prayer, “Great lord save me! Save me!”
But it seemed like Dyo had finally pushed the limits of the waiting outside guards to the limit with that. The thunder of footsteps started to echo out of the open staircase door with bellowing calls for more support.
He needed to go.
Rushing over the side of the tower he saw them: Shani, Ercole, Agrippa, and Hreysti all waiting on their horses with one ready for him.
But with the staircase blocked…. He only had one choice left. The hard way down.
Breathing in and with the guards closing in, he ran to the battlements of the tower, and jumped onto them, seeing the stone below that might kill or cripple him if he landed wrong. The stupidity of his plan became blatantly apparent as he paused for a moment.
“Roll into it as you land!” A familiar voice shouted into his mind, his father.
He jumped, trying to throw himself so as to land into a roll as he fell into the fort.
The stone slammed into him with incredible force and pain as he rolled along the tower’s perimeter wall-
And fell off it, tumbling into the newer part of the building and its slanted roof without any control, instead falling more like a ragdoll onto the tiles.
Luckily the drop was a lot shorter. Still didn’t help the pain. Or the rather undignified tumble he was now in, shoulders and limbs slamming into the roof as he rolled down it and down it sideways like a child rolling down a hill, but somehow with less grace.
Certainly not the sort that fit a demigod and the situation was more dangerous than rolling down a hill. A lot more than it as he approached closer and closer to the edge of the roof without any way of stopping. He only managed to catch one look at the ground below before falling, that of brown and grey.
The brown of a haycart that he landed squarely in with a spray of rain and hay, his impact into it providing just enough force to topple it over. A hard thud followed as hay and the bruised demigod spilt out of the cart as it landed, leaving Dyo splayed on the wet ground in front of his friends.
“Nice landing!”
Thanks, Shani.
He groaned, trying to pull himself up with a body that hurt all over without even moving. The sound of hooves approaching him as he heard, “Dy, we need to go, do you need me to get you up?”
Dyo smiled, looking up to Hreysti, whose face and eyes were filled with a concern and tenderness that he’d rarely ever seen.
Hreysti thrust out his hand and he took it, hauling Dyo up into his feet with a little less pain.
“Fast now!” Agrippa called out, “I see them!”
Hreysti nodded, “Get on top of the one there, I’ll handle the rest, we’re going to get out.”
Dyo looked over at the spare horse tied to Hreysti’s. It was wary of him, that was for sure, but how was he going to get on it?
Do I hold onto-
“Hurry up!”
Fuck it!
He grabbed onto the saddle and slipped his foot into a stirrup, pulling himself with a burst of strength onto the horse. He barely had enough time to put his other foot in a stirrup before he was jolted.
“Go!”
Ercole, Shani, and Hreysti all threw their horses into a run, bolting across the plaza and straight towards a street guarded by a few guards who threw themselves out of the way of the stampede. They were followed by the groups of gapers that then suddenly found themselves a bit too close to the action for their liking as they ran or dove away from the rushing horses.
“How far is to the gate!?” Dyo yelled as he struggled to grasp onto the reins, the horse’s mane, just something to keep him on.
“Ercole says not too long, and the horses should be able to go for a bit further out of it!” Hreysti replied, “But don’t you ever fucking do this shit ever again!”
He laughed, partly out of fear, but it was also partly genuine, “I’ll try not to! But I think I can hold my own now!”
“You could do that before and Dyo, please! I thought you were going to die!”
Dyo’s smile faded and softened slightly, “And I’m alright, I wouldn’t dare die and leave you.”
“I-I- Dyo… I- Thank you…” He sputtered, almost… Flustered?
“I also made sure to give the Inquisitor something to remember me by, something that my father might like…”
Hreysti turned his head around for a moment, eyes studying him, “What did you do?” He asked slowly.
“Forced his mind to take in a full barrage of the senses and gently… Touched it.”
Above the thunder of hooves Dyo thought he heard Hreysti laugh a little at that, “He deserves it.”
But a shout from Agrippa interrupted their little conversation, “Guys! There are guards on the gate!”
They whipped around, just in time for a crossbow bolt to whiz past their heads.
Crossbowmen dotted across the walls were beginning to unleash their quarrels straight into the party as men rushed into the gatehouse itself.
Hreysti groaned, “Hold on Dyo!”
With a kick somehow the horses went faster, charging faster and faster, all the bolts missing as they sped straight through the gates, all of them just making it through before the loud screech of metal sounded behind them.
Sure enough, it was the portcullis, closing just too late as it slammed into the ground in front of a group of foot soldiers, them and the gate too late for the planned ambush.
Letting all of them storm away free down the cobbled road towards the Republic.
Dyo’s purple eyes glowed as he locked eyes with the inquisitor and unsheathed his messer. He might have only learned a few basic moves and how to hold the thing from Shani and Ercole, but he wasn’t going to let it hold him back. Skill or not he wasn’t going to be taken alive.
Marcus’s eyes widened for a moment, his face caught in surprise before it hardened. “I won’t let your corrupted and foul words disrupt my faith daemon, I do what is required of me to save the people of this city and all of Charindom! But know this, unlike the many men you have seen before, I have the spiritual will required to withstand your unholy influence!”
“Unholy influence!?” Dyo almost spat out those words, “You just don’t want to face the fact that your work isn’t as clean or ho-“
“Shut up you filthy pagan fae!” He roared, whipping his staff around and gripping both hands around it. “You know nothing of the words of the almighty lord and the actions that have to be taken against things like you! Things whose very presence dirties the minds of those whom they contact and wield powers that reap unholy terror, and it is my duty to purge them! So, I will challenge you!”
The Inquisitor’s stance shifted, reaching out his staff and firmly grounding himself on the slick stone with his weapon pointed forward in a middle guard. On the staff, his hands started to grasp and trace the fragments of bone and scripture as he started a low, steady chant.
Dyo readied himself, sword in a side guard ready to sweep away any attacks and his other hand hovering across his torso like he had been taught, ready in the defence.
For a few moments they stood like that facing each other with only the sound of the rain and Marcus’s prayers filling the air on top of that tower.
Then the Inquisitor moved.
He lunged forwards, stepping forth while thrusting with his staff at a speed that should not have been possible for the greying man.
Dyo side-stepped right, barely avoiding it, before Marcus then whipped it towards the demigod’s still exposed gut. Even though it wasn’t travelling all that fast, the rod of ash lashed with reliquaries hurt. The blow forced most of the air out of his gut as he stumbled backwards, barely able to stand up straight.
He saw another strike incoming, an upward strike heading straight towards his sword arm. The staff flew through the air while he was still recovering and pushing with it a gush of air. A strike that would flow into another one, and then another one, and then another until he was a bleeding and broken husk on the ground if he did not act.
In his head, there was only one thing he could think of that could stop that.
He lashed out with his magic, forming it in a crude, but powerful replication of his father’s auditory hallucinations, creating a barrage of sound in the Inquisitor’s ears. There was nothing to the noise, just a howling screeching sound that shot down his nerves and made him falter.
Just the opening Dyo needed to recover and strike.
He swept upwards towards the Inquisitor’s arm with his blade, cutting through their white garments and into their arm with a rush of air. The cut was shallow, but it was enough to stain Marcus’s damp white robes red, the tang of iron mixing with the smell of the rain in the air.
The inquisitor’s face contorted with pain as he gritted his teeth but stayed steady as he snarled, “Daemonic magics won’t bring me down! Try as you might, my mind will resist!”
The staff swung towards Dyo yet again, but without the impeccable precision of before, that, when combined with another blast of sound, allowed Dyo to leap to the side again.
Quickly, he raised his blade up, just in time to catch the next staff strike. That gave him just enough time to try another thing his father taught him. Reaching into the Inquisitor’s eyes, he moulded his magic with a bit more skill this time into visions of gashes and clouds of fog that swam in his vision.
But even with all that, Marcus did not let up. He launched a barrage of wild attacks on Dyo, every moment occupied by a clumsy swing of the staff that the Demigod was able to either parry or dodge. Each successful block cut reinforced Dyo’s confidence and weakened the Inquisitor’s defence as splinters flew from the messer meeting wood, the staff now bearing the deep scars of every encounter.
Yet the assault did not stop, even as the waxed pieces of scripture were sliced and torn from the staff by steel until-
A loud crackling snap echoed above the sound of the pounding rain as one of the prized gold-encrusted reliquaries met its end at Dyo’s sword. The staff now frozen in its arc with the blade buried in it, dotted with drops of rain mixed with bone and gold dust, with Marcus staring dumbfounded at it.
Dyo took his chance.
Sliding it away from the staff he brought it around and upwards across the Inquisitor’s face. It cut across the top of his cheek, then into the bridge of his nose, before finally withdrawing with its tip coated in blood from the man’s brow.
It wasn’t deep, and it wasn’t clean, but it made the holy man roar with pain.
He stumbled backwards, his hand rushing to his face as he tried to keep his weapon up and ready with his left hand as blood ran down his face and dripped onto his white vestments. Red blood drawn by a pagan from an Arch Inquisitor stained the holy clothes.
“You…” He growled through gritted teeth, “You…”
“You challenged a son of the gods,” Dyo replied, a smirk spread across his face, “and got exactly what your hubris deserved.”
“Hubris!? Gods!? You, a foul pagan, should not dare to lecture me about theology or demean my duty to the one true god!”
He laughed, affixing Marcus with his glowing eyes, “Then you do know nothing about them! I am the son of Calsyniacus here in the flesh, a demigod! I have met Athervi eye to eye! But I bet you haven’t even had a true vision from Yaawha ever while claiming to be the one who’s divinely inspired!”
The Inquisitor’s eye was growing wild now, filled with manic desperation as the man behind it struggled to keep any composure, reciting psalms over and over again in his mind.
“If you’re so powerful and divine, kill me now with those magics that you used to turn my men into those unholy thorn bushes!” He cried out, splaying his hand out wide in the storm, affixing Dyo with both his eyes now. “Or am I too holy for your false gods’ powers to work on me!?”
The Inquisitor laughed, cackling at the top of his voice so as to almost, between it and the rain, mask the sound of thundering hooves approaching with a chorus of familiar yells. The sound of his rescue.
Dyo smiled.
“My father is the god of madness, wine, and amongst other things theatre. So, I’ll leave you something far more imaginative to remember your defeat by…”
And with that, he let his magic loose on the Inquisitor’s mind.
The entire world changed in Marcus’s eyes, lines shifting and melting as grape vines spread all across the walls and floor. The sensation of creeping and scratching covered his skin, his brain, and his lungs, even though none appeared on him as he scrambled to find them, each inhale bringing the stench of alcohol. All as voices and whispers filled his very mind from an unknown throng, their words almost indecipherable as they talked over each other. But one voice among the chaos stood out, a loud, mirthful chuckle that rang as clean and clear as crystal. A barrage of the senses that forced him to the ground with his mind practically screaming for relief from the assault.
A raw scream that spilled from his lips as a desperate prayer, “Great lord save me! Save me!”
But it seemed like Dyo had finally pushed the limits of the waiting outside guards to the limit with that. The thunder of footsteps started to echo out of the open staircase door with bellowing calls for more support.
He needed to go.
Rushing over the side of the tower he saw them: Shani, Ercole, Agrippa, and Hreysti all waiting on their horses with one ready for him.
But with the staircase blocked…. He only had one choice left. The hard way down.
Breathing in and with the guards closing in, he ran to the battlements of the tower, and jumped onto them, seeing the stone below that might kill or cripple him if he landed wrong. The stupidity of his plan became blatantly apparent as he paused for a moment.
“Roll into it as you land!” A familiar voice shouted into his mind, his father.
He jumped, trying to throw himself so as to land into a roll as he fell into the fort.
The stone slammed into him with incredible force and pain as he rolled along the tower’s perimeter wall-
And fell off it, tumbling into the newer part of the building and its slanted roof without any control, instead falling more like a ragdoll onto the tiles.
Luckily the drop was a lot shorter. Still didn’t help the pain. Or the rather undignified tumble he was now in, shoulders and limbs slamming into the roof as he rolled down it and down it sideways like a child rolling down a hill, but somehow with less grace.
Certainly not the sort that fit a demigod and the situation was more dangerous than rolling down a hill. A lot more than it as he approached closer and closer to the edge of the roof without any way of stopping. He only managed to catch one look at the ground below before falling, that of brown and grey.
The brown of a haycart that he landed squarely in with a spray of rain and hay, his impact into it providing just enough force to topple it over. A hard thud followed as hay and the bruised demigod spilt out of the cart as it landed, leaving Dyo splayed on the wet ground in front of his friends.
“Nice landing!”
Thanks, Shani.
He groaned, trying to pull himself up with a body that hurt all over without even moving. The sound of hooves approaching him as he heard, “Dy, we need to go, do you need me to get you up?”
Dyo smiled, looking up to Hreysti, whose face and eyes were filled with a concern and tenderness that he’d rarely ever seen.
Hreysti thrust out his hand and he took it, hauling Dyo up into his feet with a little less pain.
“Fast now!” Agrippa called out, “I see them!”
Hreysti nodded, “Get on top of the one there, I’ll handle the rest, we’re going to get out.”
Dyo looked over at the spare horse tied to Hreysti’s. It was wary of him, that was for sure, but how was he going to get on it?
Do I hold onto-
“Hurry up!”
Fuck it!
He grabbed onto the saddle and slipped his foot into a stirrup, pulling himself with a burst of strength onto the horse. He barely had enough time to put his other foot in a stirrup before he was jolted.
“Go!”
Ercole, Shani, and Hreysti all threw their horses into a run, bolting across the plaza and straight towards a street guarded by a few guards who threw themselves out of the way of the stampede. They were followed by the groups of gapers that then suddenly found themselves a bit too close to the action for their liking as they ran or dove away from the rushing horses.
“How far is to the gate!?” Dyo yelled as he struggled to grasp onto the reins, the horse’s mane, just something to keep him on.
“Ercole says not too long, and the horses should be able to go for a bit further out of it!” Hreysti replied, “But don’t you ever fucking do this shit ever again!”
He laughed, partly out of fear, but it was also partly genuine, “I’ll try not to! But I think I can hold my own now!”
“You could do that before and Dyo, please! I thought you were going to die!”
Dyo’s smile faded and softened slightly, “And I’m alright, I wouldn’t dare die and leave you.”
“I-I- Dyo… I- Thank you…” He sputtered, almost… Flustered?
“I also made sure to give the Inquisitor something to remember me by, something that my father might like…”
Hreysti turned his head around for a moment, eyes studying him, “What did you do?” He asked slowly.
“Forced his mind to take in a full barrage of the senses and gently… Touched it.”
Above the thunder of hooves Dyo thought he heard Hreysti laugh a little at that, “He deserves it.”
But a shout from Agrippa interrupted their little conversation, “Guys! There are guards on the gate!”
They whipped around, just in time for a crossbow bolt to whiz past their heads.
Crossbowmen dotted across the walls were beginning to unleash their quarrels straight into the party as men rushed into the gatehouse itself.
Hreysti groaned, “Hold on Dyo!”
With a kick somehow the horses went faster, charging faster and faster, all the bolts missing as they sped straight through the gates, all of them just making it through before the loud screech of metal sounded behind them.
Sure enough, it was the portcullis, closing just too late as it slammed into the ground in front of a group of foot soldiers, them and the gate too late for the planned ambush.
Letting all of them storm away free down the cobbled road towards the Republic.
WhiteRose-BlueSpace A very special thank you to my Patreons Mirron and Zero! Currently, the Patreon offers chapters ahead of when they release here or on RR, Epubs of older arcs, extra lore like the work-in-progress world timeline which includes thousands of years of history, Q&As, and more all for £3!
Dyo’s purple eyes glowed as he locked eyes with the inquisitor and unsheathed his messer. He might have only learned a few basic moves and how to hold the thing from Shani and Ercole, but he wasn’t going to let it hold him back. Skill or not he wasn’t going to be taken alive.
Marcus’s eyes widened for a moment, his face caught in surprise before it hardened. “I won’t let your corrupted and foul words disrupt my faith daemon, I do what is required of me to save the people of this city and all of Charindom! But know this, unlike the many men you have seen before, I have the spiritual will required to withstand your unholy influence!”
“Unholy influence!?” Dyo almost spat out those words, “You just don’t want to face the fact that your work isn’t as clean or ho-“
“Shut up you filthy pagan fae!” He roared, whipping his staff around and gripping both hands around it. “You know nothing of the words of the almighty lord and the actions that have to be taken against things like you! Things whose very presence dirties the minds of those whom they contact and wield powers that reap unholy terror, and it is my duty to purge them! So, I will challenge you!”
The Inquisitor’s stance shifted, reaching out his staff and firmly grounding himself on the slick stone with his weapon pointed forward in a middle guard. On the staff, his hands started to grasp and trace the fragments of bone and scripture as he started a low, steady chant.
Dyo readied himself, sword in a side guard ready to sweep away any attacks and his other hand hovering across his torso like he had been taught, ready in the defence.
For a few moments they stood like that facing each other with only the sound of the rain and Marcus’s prayers filling the air on top of that tower.
Then the Inquisitor moved.
He lunged forwards, stepping forth while thrusting with his staff at a speed that should not have been possible for the greying man.
Dyo side-stepped right, barely avoiding it, before Marcus then whipped it towards the demigod’s still exposed gut. Even though it wasn’t travelling all that fast, the rod of ash lashed with reliquaries hurt. The blow forced most of the air out of his gut as he stumbled backwards, barely able to stand up straight.
He saw another strike incoming, an upward strike heading straight towards his sword arm. The staff flew through the air while he was still recovering and pushing with it a gush of air. A strike that would flow into another one, and then another one, and then another until he was a bleeding and broken husk on the ground if he did not act.
In his head, there was only one thing he could think of that could stop that.
He lashed out with his magic, forming it in a crude, but powerful replication of his father’s auditory hallucinations, creating a barrage of sound in the Inquisitor’s ears. There was nothing to the noise, just a howling screeching sound that shot down his nerves and made him falter.
Just the opening Dyo needed to recover and strike.
He swept upwards towards the Inquisitor’s arm with his blade, cutting through their white garments and into their arm with a rush of air. The cut was shallow, but it was enough to stain Marcus’s damp white robes red, the tang of iron mixing with the smell of the rain in the air.
The inquisitor’s face contorted with pain as he gritted his teeth but stayed steady as he snarled, “Daemonic magics won’t bring me down! Try as you might, my mind will resist!”
The staff swung towards Dyo yet again, but without the impeccable precision of before, that, when combined with another blast of sound, allowed Dyo to leap to the side again.
Quickly, he raised his blade up, just in time to catch the next staff strike. That gave him just enough time to try another thing his father taught him. Reaching into the Inquisitor’s eyes, he moulded his magic with a bit more skill this time into visions of gashes and clouds of fog that swam in his vision.
But even with all that, Marcus did not let up. He launched a barrage of wild attacks on Dyo, every moment occupied by a clumsy swing of the staff that the Demigod was able to either parry or dodge. Each successful block cut reinforced Dyo’s confidence and weakened the Inquisitor’s defence as splinters flew from the messer meeting wood, the staff now bearing the deep scars of every encounter.
Yet the assault did not stop, even as the waxed pieces of scripture were sliced and torn from the staff by steel until-
A loud crackling snap echoed above the sound of the pounding rain as one of the prized gold-encrusted reliquaries met its end at Dyo’s sword. The staff now frozen in its arc with the blade buried in it, dotted with drops of rain mixed with bone and gold dust, with Marcus staring dumbfounded at it.
Dyo took his chance.
Sliding it away from the staff he brought it around and upwards across the Inquisitor’s face. It cut across the top of his cheek, then into the bridge of his nose, before finally withdrawing with its tip coated in blood from the man’s brow.
It wasn’t deep, and it wasn’t clean, but it made the holy man roar with pain.
He stumbled backwards, his hand rushing to his face as he tried to keep his weapon up and ready with his left hand as blood ran down his face and dripped onto his white vestments. Red blood drawn by a pagan from an Arch Inquisitor stained the holy clothes.
“You…” He growled through gritted teeth, “You…”
“You challenged a son of the gods,” Dyo replied, a smirk spread across his face, “and got exactly what your hubris deserved.”
“Hubris!? Gods!? You, a foul pagan, should not dare to lecture me about theology or demean my duty to the one true god!”
He laughed, affixing Marcus with his glowing eyes, “Then you do know nothing about them! I am the son of Calsyniacus here in the flesh, a demigod! I have met Athervi eye to eye! But I bet you haven’t even had a true vision from Yaawha ever while claiming to be the one who’s divinely inspired!”
The Inquisitor’s eye was growing wild now, filled with manic desperation as the man behind it struggled to keep any composure, reciting psalms over and over again in his mind.
“If you’re so powerful and divine, kill me now with those magics that you used to turn my men into those unholy thorn bushes!” He cried out, splaying his hand out wide in the storm, affixing Dyo with both his eyes now. “Or am I too holy for your false gods’ powers to work on me!?”
The Inquisitor laughed, cackling at the top of his voice so as to almost, between it and the rain, mask the sound of thundering hooves approaching with a chorus of familiar yells. The sound of his rescue.
Dyo smiled.
“My father is the god of madness, wine, and amongst other things theatre. So, I’ll leave you something far more imaginative to remember your defeat by…”
And with that, he let his magic loose on the Inquisitor’s mind.
The entire world changed in Marcus’s eyes, lines shifting and melting as grape vines spread all across the walls and floor. The sensation of creeping and scratching covered his skin, his brain, and his lungs, even though none appeared on him as he scrambled to find them, each inhale bringing the stench of alcohol. All as voices and whispers filled his very mind from an unknown throng, their words almost indecipherable as they talked over each other. But one voice among the chaos stood out, a loud, mirthful chuckle that rang as clean and clear as crystal. A barrage of the senses that forced him to the ground with his mind practically screaming for relief from the assault.
A raw scream that spilled from his lips as a desperate prayer, “Great lord save me! Save me!”
But it seemed like Dyo had finally pushed the limits of the waiting outside guards to the limit with that. The thunder of footsteps started to echo out of the open staircase door with bellowing calls for more support.
He needed to go.
Rushing over the side of the tower he saw them: Shani, Ercole, Agrippa, and Hreysti all waiting on their horses with one ready for him.
But with the staircase blocked…. He only had one choice left. The hard way down.
Breathing in and with the guards closing in, he ran to the battlements of the tower, and jumped onto them, seeing the stone below that might kill or cripple him if he landed wrong. The stupidity of his plan became blatantly apparent as he paused for a moment.
“Roll into it as you land!” A familiar voice shouted into his mind, his father.
He jumped, trying to throw himself so as to land into a roll as he fell into the fort.
The stone slammed into him with incredible force and pain as he rolled along the tower’s perimeter wall-
And fell off it, tumbling into the newer part of the building and its slanted roof without any control, instead falling more like a ragdoll onto the tiles.
Luckily the drop was a lot shorter. Still didn’t help the pain. Or the rather undignified tumble he was now in, shoulders and limbs slamming into the roof as he rolled down it and down it sideways like a child rolling down a hill, but somehow with less grace.
Certainly not the sort that fit a demigod and the situation was more dangerous than rolling down a hill. A lot more than it as he approached closer and closer to the edge of the roof without any way of stopping. He only managed to catch one look at the ground below before falling, that of brown and grey.
The brown of a haycart that he landed squarely in with a spray of rain and hay, his impact into it providing just enough force to topple it over. A hard thud followed as hay and the bruised demigod spilt out of the cart as it landed, leaving Dyo splayed on the wet ground in front of his friends.
“Nice landing!”
Thanks, Shani.
He groaned, trying to pull himself up with a body that hurt all over without even moving. The sound of hooves approaching him as he heard, “Dy, we need to go, do you need me to get you up?”
Dyo smiled, looking up to Hreysti, whose face and eyes were filled with a concern and tenderness that he’d rarely ever seen.
Hreysti thrust out his hand and he took it, hauling Dyo up into his feet with a little less pain.
“Fast now!” Agrippa called out, “I see them!”
Hreysti nodded, “Get on top of the one there, I’ll handle the rest, we’re going to get out.”
Dyo looked over at the spare horse tied to Hreysti’s. It was wary of him, that was for sure, but how was he going to get on it?
Do I hold onto-
“Hurry up!”
Fuck it!
He grabbed onto the saddle and slipped his foot into a stirrup, pulling himself with a burst of strength onto the horse. He barely had enough time to put his other foot in a stirrup before he was jolted.
“Go!”
Ercole, Shani, and Hreysti all threw their horses into a run, bolting across the plaza and straight towards a street guarded by a few guards who threw themselves out of the way of the stampede. They were followed by the groups of gapers that then suddenly found themselves a bit too close to the action for their liking as they ran or dove away from the rushing horses.
“How far is to the gate!?” Dyo yelled as he struggled to grasp onto the reins, the horse’s mane, just something to keep him on.
“Ercole says not too long, and the horses should be able to go for a bit further out of it!” Hreysti replied, “But don’t you ever fucking do this shit ever again!”
He laughed, partly out of fear, but it was also partly genuine, “I’ll try not to! But I think I can hold my own now!”
“You could do that before and Dyo, please! I thought you were going to die!”
Dyo’s smile faded and softened slightly, “And I’m alright, I wouldn’t dare die and leave you.”
“I-I- Dyo… I- Thank you…” He sputtered, almost… Flustered?
“I also made sure to give the Inquisitor something to remember me by, something that my father might like…”
Hreysti turned his head around for a moment, eyes studying him, “What did you do?” He asked slowly.
“Forced his mind to take in a full barrage of the senses and gently… Touched it.”
Above the thunder of hooves Dyo thought he heard Hreysti laugh a little at that, “He deserves it.”
But a shout from Agrippa interrupted their little conversation, “Guys! There are guards on the gate!”
They whipped around, just in time for a crossbow bolt to whiz past their heads.
Crossbowmen dotted across the walls were beginning to unleash their quarrels straight into the party as men rushed into the gatehouse itself.
Hreysti groaned, “Hold on Dyo!”
With a kick somehow the horses went faster, charging faster and faster, all the bolts missing as they sped straight through the gates, all of them just making it through before the loud screech of metal sounded behind them.
Sure enough, it was the portcullis, closing just too late as it slammed into the ground in front of a group of foot soldiers, them and the gate too late for the planned ambush.
Letting all of them storm away free down the cobbled road towards the Republic.
Dyo’s purple eyes glowed as he locked eyes with the inquisitor and unsheathed his messer. He might have only learned a few basic moves and how to hold the thing from Shani and Ercole, but he wasn’t going to let it hold him back. Skill or not he wasn’t going to be taken alive.
Marcus’s eyes widened for a moment, his face caught in surprise before it hardened. “I won’t let your corrupted and foul words disrupt my faith daemon, I do what is required of me to save the people of this city and all of Charindom! But know this, unlike the many men you have seen before, I have the spiritual will required to withstand your unholy influence!”
“Unholy influence!?” Dyo almost spat out those words, “You just don’t want to face the fact that your work isn’t as clean or ho-“
“Shut up you filthy pagan fae!” He roared, whipping his staff around and gripping both hands around it. “You know nothing of the words of the almighty lord and the actions that have to be taken against things like you! Things whose very presence dirties the minds of those whom they contact and wield powers that reap unholy terror, and it is my duty to purge them! So, I will challenge you!”
The Inquisitor’s stance shifted, reaching out his staff and firmly grounding himself on the slick stone with his weapon pointed forward in a middle guard. On the staff, his hands started to grasp and trace the fragments of bone and scripture as he started a low, steady chant.
Dyo readied himself, sword in a side guard ready to sweep away any attacks and his other hand hovering across his torso like he had been taught, ready in the defence.
For a few moments they stood like that facing each other with only the sound of the rain and Marcus’s prayers filling the air on top of that tower.
Then the Inquisitor moved.
He lunged forwards, stepping forth while thrusting with his staff at a speed that should not have been possible for the greying man.
Dyo side-stepped right, barely avoiding it, before Marcus then whipped it towards the demigod’s still exposed gut. Even though it wasn’t travelling all that fast, the rod of ash lashed with reliquaries hurt. The blow forced most of the air out of his gut as he stumbled backwards, barely able to stand up straight.
He saw another strike incoming, an upward strike heading straight towards his sword arm. The staff flew through the air while he was still recovering and pushing with it a gush of air. A strike that would flow into another one, and then another one, and then another until he was a bleeding and broken husk on the ground if he did not act.
In his head, there was only one thing he could think of that could stop that.
He lashed out with his magic, forming it in a crude, but powerful replication of his father’s auditory hallucinations, creating a barrage of sound in the Inquisitor’s ears. There was nothing to the noise, just a howling screeching sound that shot down his nerves and made him falter.
Just the opening Dyo needed to recover and strike.
He swept upwards towards the Inquisitor’s arm with his blade, cutting through their white garments and into their arm with a rush of air. The cut was shallow, but it was enough to stain Marcus’s damp white robes red, the tang of iron mixing with the smell of the rain in the air.
The inquisitor’s face contorted with pain as he gritted his teeth but stayed steady as he snarled, “Daemonic magics won’t bring me down! Try as you might, my mind will resist!”
The staff swung towards Dyo yet again, but without the impeccable precision of before, that, when combined with another blast of sound, allowed Dyo to leap to the side again.
Quickly, he raised his blade up, just in time to catch the next staff strike. That gave him just enough time to try another thing his father taught him. Reaching into the Inquisitor’s eyes, he moulded his magic with a bit more skill this time into visions of gashes and clouds of fog that swam in his vision.
But even with all that, Marcus did not let up. He launched a barrage of wild attacks on Dyo, every moment occupied by a clumsy swing of the staff that the Demigod was able to either parry or dodge. Each successful block cut reinforced Dyo’s confidence and weakened the Inquisitor’s defence as splinters flew from the messer meeting wood, the staff now bearing the deep scars of every encounter.
Yet the assault did not stop, even as the waxed pieces of scripture were sliced and torn from the staff by steel until-
A loud crackling snap echoed above the sound of the pounding rain as one of the prized gold-encrusted reliquaries met its end at Dyo’s sword. The staff now frozen in its arc with the blade buried in it, dotted with drops of rain mixed with bone and gold dust, with Marcus staring dumbfounded at it.
Dyo took his chance.
Sliding it away from the staff he brought it around and upwards across the Inquisitor’s face. It cut across the top of his cheek, then into the bridge of his nose, before finally withdrawing with its tip coated in blood from the man’s brow.
It wasn’t deep, and it wasn’t clean, but it made the holy man roar with pain.
He stumbled backwards, his hand rushing to his face as he tried to keep his weapon up and ready with his left hand as blood ran down his face and dripped onto his white vestments. Red blood drawn by a pagan from an Arch Inquisitor stained the holy clothes.
“You…” He growled through gritted teeth, “You…”
“You challenged a son of the gods,” Dyo replied, a smirk spread across his face, “and got exactly what your hubris deserved.”
“Hubris!? Gods!? You, a foul pagan, should not dare to lecture me about theology or demean my duty to the one true god!”
He laughed, affixing Marcus with his glowing eyes, “Then you do know nothing about them! I am the son of Calsyniacus here in the flesh, a demigod! I have met Athervi eye to eye! But I bet you haven’t even had a true vision from Yaawha ever while claiming to be the one who’s divinely inspired!”
The Inquisitor’s eye was growing wild now, filled with manic desperation as the man behind it struggled to keep any composure, reciting psalms over and over again in his mind.
“If you’re so powerful and divine, kill me now with those magics that you used to turn my men into those unholy thorn bushes!” He cried out, splaying his hand out wide in the storm, affixing Dyo with both his eyes now. “Or am I too holy for your false gods’ powers to work on me!?”
The Inquisitor laughed, cackling at the top of his voice so as to almost, between it and the rain, mask the sound of thundering hooves approaching with a chorus of familiar yells. The sound of his rescue.
Dyo smiled.
“My father is the god of madness, wine, and amongst other things theatre. So, I’ll leave you something far more imaginative to remember your defeat by…”
And with that, he let his magic loose on the Inquisitor’s mind.
The entire world changed in Marcus’s eyes, lines shifting and melting as grape vines spread all across the walls and floor. The sensation of creeping and scratching covered his skin, his brain, and his lungs, even though none appeared on him as he scrambled to find them, each inhale bringing the stench of alcohol. All as voices and whispers filled his very mind from an unknown throng, their words almost indecipherable as they talked over each other. But one voice among the chaos stood out, a loud, mirthful chuckle that rang as clean and clear as crystal. A barrage of the senses that forced him to the ground with his mind practically screaming for relief from the assault.
A raw scream that spilled from his lips as a desperate prayer, “Great lord save me! Save me!”
But it seemed like Dyo had finally pushed the limits of the waiting outside guards to the limit with that. The thunder of footsteps started to echo out of the open staircase door with bellowing calls for more support.
He needed to go.
Rushing over the side of the tower he saw them: Shani, Ercole, Agrippa, and Hreysti all waiting on their horses with one ready for him.
But with the staircase blocked…. He only had one choice left. The hard way down.
Breathing in and with the guards closing in, he ran to the battlements of the tower, and jumped onto them, seeing the stone below that might kill or cripple him if he landed wrong. The stupidity of his plan became blatantly apparent as he paused for a moment.
“Roll into it as you land!” A familiar voice shouted into his mind, his father.
He jumped, trying to throw himself so as to land into a roll as he fell into the fort.
The stone slammed into him with incredible force and pain as he rolled along the tower’s perimeter wall-
And fell off it, tumbling into the newer part of the building and its slanted roof without any control, instead falling more like a ragdoll onto the tiles.
Luckily the drop was a lot shorter. Still didn’t help the pain. Or the rather undignified tumble he was now in, shoulders and limbs slamming into the roof as he rolled down it and down it sideways like a child rolling down a hill, but somehow with less grace.
Certainly not the sort that fit a demigod and the situation was more dangerous than rolling down a hill. A lot more than it as he approached closer and closer to the edge of the roof without any way of stopping. He only managed to catch one look at the ground below before falling, that of brown and grey.
The brown of a haycart that he landed squarely in with a spray of rain and hay, his impact into it providing just enough force to topple it over. A hard thud followed as hay and the bruised demigod spilt out of the cart as it landed, leaving Dyo splayed on the wet ground in front of his friends.
“Nice landing!”
Thanks, Shani.
He groaned, trying to pull himself up with a body that hurt all over without even moving. The sound of hooves approaching him as he heard, “Dy, we need to go, do you need me to get you up?”
Dyo smiled, looking up to Hreysti, whose face and eyes were filled with a concern and tenderness that he’d rarely ever seen.
Hreysti thrust out his hand and he took it, hauling Dyo up into his feet with a little less pain.
“Fast now!” Agrippa called out, “I see them!”
Hreysti nodded, “Get on top of the one there, I’ll handle the rest, we’re going to get out.”
Dyo looked over at the spare horse tied to Hreysti’s. It was wary of him, that was for sure, but how was he going to get on it?
Do I hold onto-
“Hurry up!”
Fuck it!
He grabbed onto the saddle and slipped his foot into a stirrup, pulling himself with a burst of strength onto the horse. He barely had enough time to put his other foot in a stirrup before he was jolted.
“Go!”
Ercole, Shani, and Hreysti all threw their horses into a run, bolting across the plaza and straight towards a street guarded by a few guards who threw themselves out of the way of the stampede. They were followed by the groups of gapers that then suddenly found themselves a bit too close to the action for their liking as they ran or dove away from the rushing horses.
“How far is to the gate!?” Dyo yelled as he struggled to grasp onto the reins, the horse’s mane, just something to keep him on.
“Ercole says not too long, and the horses should be able to go for a bit further out of it!” Hreysti replied, “But don’t you ever fucking do this shit ever again!”
He laughed, partly out of fear, but it was also partly genuine, “I’ll try not to! But I think I can hold my own now!”
“You could do that before and Dyo, please! I thought you were going to die!”
Dyo’s smile faded and softened slightly, “And I’m alright, I wouldn’t dare die and leave you.”
“I-I- Dyo… I- Thank you…” He sputtered, almost… Flustered?
“I also made sure to give the Inquisitor something to remember me by, something that my father might like…”
Hreysti turned his head around for a moment, eyes studying him, “What did you do?” He asked slowly.
“Forced his mind to take in a full barrage of the senses and gently… Touched it.”
Above the thunder of hooves Dyo thought he heard Hreysti laugh a little at that, “He deserves it.”
But a shout from Agrippa interrupted their little conversation, “Guys! There are guards on the gate!”
They whipped around, just in time for a crossbow bolt to whiz past their heads.
Crossbowmen dotted across the walls were beginning to unleash their quarrels straight into the party as men rushed into the gatehouse itself.
Hreysti groaned, “Hold on Dyo!”
With a kick somehow the horses went faster, charging faster and faster, all the bolts missing as they sped straight through the gates, all of them just making it through before the loud screech of metal sounded behind them.
Sure enough, it was the portcullis, closing just too late as it slammed into the ground in front of a group of foot soldiers, them and the gate too late for the planned ambush.
Letting all of them storm away free down the cobbled road towards the Republic.
WhiteRose-BlueSpace A very special thank you to my Patreons Mirron and Zero! Currently, the Patreon offers chapters ahead of when they release here or on RR, Epubs of older arcs, extra lore like the work-in-progress world timeline which includes thousands of years of history, Q&As, and more all for £3!
