City in Crisis
City in Crisis
A man ran for his life.
Breath was a wet burn high in his throat. Blood had soaked his clothing through, dyeing it a dark, clinging red.
Even so, he could still run. Not through willpower—the man simply wasn't human.
He was a follower.
A follower of Poison-spitting Dragon.
He veered into a cramped alley, pressing deeper into the narrow passage. It was a tight fit, but he had no choice. Out in the open, they'd spot him in seconds. He choked down the breath clawing its way up his throat and forced his legs to keep moving.
"Aaaagh!"
His legs buckled. He hit the ground rolling as agony ripped through his thigh. Clutching at the mangled flesh, he forced his eyes downward.
A shard of bone the size of his palm was embedded in the muscle.
"Gh... ngh... gahh...!"
The blood pooling beneath him was already turning the dirt slick. No time to hesitate. He tore the bone free, gasped, and hauled himself upright. Limping, he staggered on.
Anything to escape. Anything to survive.
He hobbled his way to the end of a long alley and stopped dead.
Something stood at the far end.
A grotesque thing.
It had legs like a man's, but there wasn't a strip of skin to be found. Nothing but the stark exposure of bone and sinew holding the creature upright.
From its gut, entrails hung in loops, studded thick with bone shards that turned the dangling viscera into something like a bladed whip. Where a head should have been, a long, tube-like protrusion jutted out instead.
The follower knew exactly what he was looking at: a devotee of the Formless One.
The monster advanced slowly from the alley's end.
The follower tried to bolt. The dangling entrails lashed out faster than thought.
Crack!
"Hk—"
The tip of the gut-whip was lined with razor-sharp bone, and it punched through the follower's stomach without resistance. The tentacle writhed, serpentine, and hurled him aside. His insides spilled across the ground in a sticky smear. Consciousness fading, one thought surfaced.
'I'm dead.'
The writhing entrails coiled with sickening killing intent, poised to strike—
Thwack!
The monster went rigid as living flesh tore open.
An arrow. A thin, needle-sharp arrowhead, like an awl.
It sank home, and the creature lifted its tube-like head—
Thwack. Thwack-thwack.
Multiple shafts struck simultaneously, driving it back. Head, tentacles, the bare shoulder where an arm should have been—all punched through. The creature reeled.
The follower's heart surged. 'Allies? Did the priest send someone?'
Survival flared white-hot in his chest. He tried desperately to rise, to flee.
Crack!
A fresh arrow slammed through his thigh before he could move. His eyes flew wide. The scream tore out of him before he could stop it.
The arrows had been loosed almost simultaneously—too fast, too continuous, for a single archer. The figure who stepped into view at the far end of the alley was one man nonetheless.
Cold teal eyes. Black hair, curling slightly. Aslan.
He stowed the bow and pulled an axe from his back.
A heavy, massive two-handed axe—the one Ereta used to carry. He lowered his stance and charged.
The monster answered with its tentacles. The gut-woven whips bristled with bone so densely packed it hissed like a nest of razor blades.
Whish!
The tentacle came down from above—a narrow alley didn't leave room to dodge. A vertical strike aimed at the crown of Aslan's skull. He swung the axe to meet it.
Shing!
And sheared through.
The tentacle was armored in bone so tightly clustered that cutting it should have been impossible. Aslan simply drove the axe-blade between the bone shards and parted them.
He'd swung from low to high on a diagonal. He let the motion carry, shifting his grip wide and drawing the axe back behind him. A second tentacle was already scything toward him—the guts spawned more than one whip.
"Hup."
A short, sharp breath. Aslan pivoted and slipped past. The tentacle carved the air where he'd been and raked the alley wall with a glassy screech. Through the shriek of scraping bone, Aslan advanced.
Three meters. The axe couldn't reach, but the tentacles could.
This time the Formless One's limb came from underneath, rising like a whip aimed at Aslan's jaw. He brought the axe down from its ready position behind his back.
Riiip.
Severed clean. Losing one appendage after another should have rattled it, but the Formless One had no emotions left to rattle. It remained eerily composed—and aimed the long tube of its head straight at Aslan.
Pfoo!
A dull, airy pop. A spike of bone, shaped like a rail spike, shot from the opening.
Clang!
The projectile didn't touch him—but it did knock the axe from his hands. The weapon spun away. The monster lunged to envelop him, its entrails writhing with raw, gnawing hunger.
The Formless One's faithful were always starving. They craved new souls, new flesh and bone, and this one surged forward with no thought for anything but the meal in front of it.
So it missed the change.
Missed the faint, pale light kindling along the edge of Aslan's knife-hand. By the time the glow registered, there was no retreating.
'Heart Piercing.'
The words were barely a murmur, but the edge of his hand flared pale blue.
Heart Piercing—a special feat of martial arts. Its effect was simple: it concentrated penetration so intensely that a bare hand could pierce a beast's heart and kill it.
The moment that knife-hand gained the penetrating power of a dagger, the fight was already decided.
Shing!
First, Aslan swept upward and sheared through the tentacle lancing toward him. The limb parted as cleanly as if cut by a masterwork sword.
A clear impossibility. The Formless One tried to withdraw, but Aslan's hand was already driving forward.
Crunch!
The hand punched cleanly through the Formless One's head.
Still impaled, Aslan pivoted hard and wrenched his body through the arc.
"Know how to break-fall?"
The creature's legs left the ground. It traced a circle through the air and smashed onto its back.
Boom!
It twitched where it lay. Aslan's boot came down.
He stomped mercilessly. The body split with a wet crack and stopped moving.
Aslan pulled a flask of oil from his coat and doused the dead follower.
Only when the corpse was sodden did he put the flask away and aim two fingers.
"Ignition."
Whump.
A spark shot from his fingertip and caught. The smell of burning flesh slithered through the alley. Through the seeping smoke, the man who'd been running—the follower of Poison-spitting Dragon—let himself feel relief.
He didn't recognize Aslan.
Aslan approached and extended a hand. The follower couldn't stand on his own anymore. He grabbed hold.
"Th-thank you. Is the priest...?"
Which was exactly why he didn't see what came next.
The hand that had been pulling him up seized his wrist and collar instead, and the world spun—the same throw Aslan had just used on the Formless One's devotee.
Boom!
"Hk—!"
Crunch!
"Ghhh... nghh..."
Aslan slammed him down, drew a dagger, and drove it through his shoulder. The violence fell so fast the man couldn't process it. His body caught up through pain alone, and he screamed. Aslan looked down at his gasping, flailing captive and spoke quietly.
"Thinking the man who put an arrow through your leg is an ally—you really aren't thinking straight, are you."
Crrrrk.
"Aaaaaaaagh!"
He twisted the blade. Flesh tore. The man shrieked.
"Wh-why... why are you... doing this?"
Aslan stopped twisting. The follower stared up at him, panting, eyes huge with terror.
"A few questions. Answer immediately. Tell the truth, and there won't be a problem."
"If... if I talk, will you let me live?"
"That's irrelevant."
"If you're going to kill me anyway, I won't say anything! I, I am— aaaaagh!"
Expressionless, Aslan pulled the dagger from the man's shoulder and drove it through the back of his hand. The wet crunch of the puncture had barely registered before Aslan reversed his grip and slowly drew the blade upward, splitting bone, then muscle, then skin. Blood sheeted down.
"So immediate pain doesn't bother you? I can keep going as long as you like. If you'd rather avoid this, tell me everything. Without leaving anything out."
Aslan pulled the dagger free and rested the flat of it against the man's cheek. The follower's terror was naked now, his breath a series of hitched, wheezing gasps.
"I... I understand. I understand. Please... please..."
He was pleading. Aslan didn't blink. He just stared down with eyes so flat and cold they almost looked aggrieved.
The follower shrank back, sucking in air. After a long silence, Aslan spoke.
"Situation secure. Get over here."
"Yes!"
"Mm."
Two figures emerged from opposite ends of the alley—Angie and Ereta, positioned to cut off any escape. They'd been waiting at the fallback points in case anyone slipped past during the fight.
They approached and regarded the prisoner, each with a different look in her eyes.
Ereta, watching the aftermath of Aslan's brutality, kept twisting and untwisting the edge of her collar, unable to keep still. Angie stared at Aslan with an expression somewhere between appalled and exhausted—and then, remembering she'd boasted earlier that she should handle interrogations like this, her face went red.
Only the followers of the Poison-spitting Dragon looked terrified. The rest of those present appeared perfectly at ease, and the interrogator waited, tapping his teeth together as he considered what question to ask first.
The first question was this.
"Tell me everything you know about the Formless One."
"The... the Formless One?"
Aslan drove his dagger through the follower's cheek without hesitation. He thrust it through and drew the blade out toward the mouth. The wound gaped hideously, and the follower choked down a scream.
"Answer. Nothing else is permitted."
"A god! It's a god!"
"Then why is this god attacking you?"
"Th-that..."
The follower hesitated—and knew instantly he'd made a mistake. Aslan's dagger was already moving. It flicked across his eye, and the follower clutched his face and wept.
Crunch.
"Aagh... hrrgh..."
"Why is this god attacking you?"
"I d-don't know... I don't know... It just... all of a sudden..."
No answer. Aslan drove the dagger into the man's forearm. He worked the blade, peeling flesh from bone as though filleting a fish, and the follower bucked his hips and screamed.
"Why is this god attacking you?"
Aslan withdrew the dagger and repeated the question, but still the follower had nothing. He gasped for air and could only repeat that he didn't know.
'He truly doesn't know.'
Ever since they'd arrived in Kardi, Aslan had been hunting the Formless One's followers without pause. And in the course of that hunt, he had noticed something strange.
The Formless One's own followers were hunting cultists of other gods who were hiding in the city.
Aslan had begun interrogating followers he'd happened to save along the way, trying to extract information, but not a single one knew why they were being attacked.
The answer was always the same: they didn't know.
That consistency told him he was right. Ordinary followers had no useful information.
Which meant he could draw some inferences.
The Formless One wasn't simply assaulting Kardi. It was waging a war inside the city—a war against the Cosmic Inevitability.
Whether the war was one-sided or not remained unclear, but the fact of it was plain. The Formless One's cult had somehow identified priests and followers of the Cosmic Inevitability—the very faction that would attack the city once the alliance main quest began—and was striking at them aggressively. So aggressively that innocent bystanders were being caught in the crossfire in even greater numbers.
'What's the reason?'
Aslan returned the dagger to his belt and thought.
The gods didn't generally get along. The Ancient Gods had often been siblings or spouses and rarely fell into lasting enmity, but the gods of the present era were hostile toward one another—rivals competing for the world, you could say. In rare cases, their priests and followers fought battles in their gods' names.
But they'd never fought this openly. Conflicts stayed small—skirmishes, duels, nothing more. Nobody had ever waged a city-wide guerrilla war. The gods couldn't even sustain a death struggle if they wanted to; feuds between deities usually ended with a few dead followers or a dead priest. That was the norm.
The Formless One's behavior was nothing like any of that.
This was an onslaught. Extermination. The collateral damage to the city ran so high it barely seemed secondary.
Aslan had conducted these interrogations because he couldn't guess why—and he'd learned almost nothing.
"I don't... I don't know anything, milord. Please, please let me go... The Kardi... the Kardi chapter's been wiped out... I know nothing. Even if you try, you'll get nothing..."
The follower begged for mercy through his split cheek, every syllable whistling. Aslan gazed down at him with cold eyes.
Outwardly, the man could pass for human. Aslan drew his dagger again and slipped it through the man's clothing.
Rrrrip.
"Guh..."
The blade tore through the fabric, and Aslan found the dried-out skin in a heartbeat. It had a scale-like texture—desiccated, rotting flesh that gave off the sharp scent of poison. Clear evidence of partial priestification. Proof the man had abandoned his humanity.
Aslan noted it and spoke flatly.
"No. You die here."
"N-no..."
Crunch.
Aslan's dagger dropped in a reverse grip, and the follower's body shuddered once before going still. The blade buried in his brow quivered faintly.
Aslan pulled the weapon free and straightened, glancing at the corpse.
Clearing out the Formless One's followers had been relatively easy. The objective was murky, the motive unfathomable, and that was frustrating—but the extermination itself was straightforward. A mutated follower could be dangerous, but still fell short of priest-level. Nothing difficult.
The real problem was finding them.
Aslan pictured a Formless One follower mid-transformation: human skin seeming to turn inside out, a monstrous shape emerging in an instant. Without a deliberate detection method, an ambush was almost inevitable.
Fortunately, Aslan had two.
The first came from something he'd noticed along the way: the Formless One's followers were actively hunting the cultists of the Cosmic Inevitability. Identifying a Formless One follower might be difficult, but finding a Cosmic Inevitability cultist was easy. A former high priest stood among his party, after all.
With Ereta's help, Aslan could locate them quickly—and once he located them, he tailed them and waited until they were attacked. When the attack came, he dealt with it as he had just now: extermination, interrogation, and then arrest or execution depending on the evidence of partial priestification.
The second method was more complicated.
It had occurred to him after hearing Artifice's report—the one about negotiating with a priest and learning of the Formless One's activities. He would use himself as bait. If other gods could recognize what he carried, then the Formless One could recognize it too. And if it could, then the purity Aslan possessed would draw it in.
Purity: the divinity of an Ancient God, something already alien in this world. That alien divinity would inevitably attract the attention of followers and priests. Once a Formless One follower showed itself, drawn by that divinity, the rest was a matter of sensing them first.
Luckily, Aslan had Luck—and experience. The same sense of divinity he'd honed while cleaving through the Fire-weaving Spider's power, combined with Luck, let him detect the Formless One's followers before they detected him.
He'd caught a considerable number that way.
The problem was just how many that number represented.
"What does that make now?"
"Seventy-one."
Even for an ordinary cult's followers, that was excessive. And with more still to be found inside Kardi—far too many.
"...Isn't that a lot? You've already killed that many?"
Angie thought it was a lot. Ereta frowned, tilting her head.
Of course, a god didn't lose power just because followers or priests died. The gods were transcendent beings; you couldn't really say their strength diminished at all. But even so, they never scattered their followers this recklessly.
Aslan turned the question over in his mind.
The Evil Gods were transcendent and inscrutable, yes—but their patterns of behavior were not wholly beyond comprehension. Not always logical, not always bound by coherent conditions, but there was always a reason, even if only an emotional one.
The Formless One, by contrast, defied understanding even in its behavior. No emotional logic. No rational cause. Aslan abandoned the notion that it might be the hidden mastermind behind events. It was too mindless for that. Perhaps that mindlessness was a smokescreen, but if so, it didn't look like it right now.
Indiscriminate dispersal of followers. Rampage inside Kardi. Tactics verging on open war. Aggressively hunting the followers of another god. The puzzle pieces didn't fit—nothing lined up—and Aslan brooded over it.
'What in the hell is the Formless One's goal? What does it want?'
A few more pieces and he felt sure he could grasp it, but none were forthcoming, and that irritated him. He was just considering whether he ought to hunt down and kill a priest when—
"—This way! Over here—!"
A shout rang out, followed by the clash of steel. Beneath the sound of weapons meeting, something that was distinctly not human rasped, and Aslan's experience told him it was the sound of the Formless One's followers.
The sounds of flight intertwined with the sounds of battle, and they were coming this way—into the alley where Aslan stood.
"Once we clear this alley—!"
The noise ceased. Eight men appeared in the narrow passage, panting and clutching blood-soaked weapons. They stopped when they saw Aslan.
They were followers. Poison-spitting Dragon cultists. The scales and rotted flesh crawling across the face of the man at the front marked him unmistakably.
"They're coming! Move, move forward!"
The leader had frozen at the sight of Aslan, but the others pushed him forward from behind. In the interval, Aslan kicked up his returning axe and caught it.
Behind the eight men, a cluster of Formless One followers filled the alley's far end. Ahead of them, the alley was blocked by Aslan. Trapped in the middle, the Poison-spitting Dragon cultists found their most heavily priestified member contorting his face with a groan.
"The gods' own rotten luck..."
He recognized Aslan. He knew who he was. He recognized the high priest beside him, and the last descendant of the Ancient God.
Aslan saw the recognition dawn and thought: the final puzzle piece had arrived at last.
"Leave that one alive."
Aslan gave the order to his party, and the cultist who'd recognized him twisted his face in despair and screamed.
"They're coming...!"