A Worship of Pain
Not you lot again?
There was no rebellious glint in the men's eyes, but honestly, I hadn't expected them to start talking all at once in the first place. They looked like they'd rolled around in the underworld plenty, so I figured they'd keep their mouths shut through anything short of serious torture.
Which was why I'd been wracking my brain over how to administer an interrogation method I'd never once tried in my life... but in the end, all that agonizing turned out to be worth absolutely nothing.
"So... you're just here on orders? Told to help the people in this place?"
"Yes, yes! That's right!"
"Keep your voice down."
"Yes, sir..."
Maybe it was thanks to all the torturing they'd dished out themselves over the years? The burly men spilled every last scrap of information on their own before I even came close to laying a finger on them. Why they were here, all the way down to the orders they were meant to carry out.
Once I'd heard everything I needed, I moved on to the more essential questions.
"The people you're cooperating with. Do you know who they are?"
"Well, you see... we only came because we were ordered to, so we don't really know. Besides, those ones always wear these flowing robes, and— Huh!?"
FWOOSH!
Noah swung her mace down at the man kneeling before her, bound tight as a knot. The spikes on its head came to a halt a mere centimeter from his frozen, wide-open eye. His hair fluttered in the wake of the wind pressure. The man himself—and the other men watching—swallowed dry gulps in unison.
"I'd advise against lying. You lot couldn't possibly be here without some kind of insurance. You're the type who treasure your own lives above all else."
Which is exactly why you've been spilling everything without a single round of torture, no?
I hadn't assumed these men were carrying no clues at all. Scoundrels like these always dig an escape hatch. And sure enough, one of the prisoners—the hulking bald one—spoke up cautiously.
"Well, you see..."
Their characteristics:
One—whenever they met, they were always draped in extravagant robes.
Two—the hierarchy seemed ironclad; they obeyed their superiors' commands without a shred of resistance.
Three—no one knew what they were up to, but every so often the corpses of prisoners would turn out horrifically mutilated.
Four—they gathered at fixed times to hold worship services...
"Wait, they're cultists, aren't they?"
"C-cultists? We swear on our lives we've had nothing to do with people like—"
"Quiet."
I silenced the man before he could work himself into another fit. Listening to the description, they were cultists through and through.
Henry's eyes went round at the word cult.
"Cultists... all the way out in a backwater like this? No—actually, being a frontier would mean less scrutiny, wouldn't it."
"Didn't you hear? A few months back we wiped out a small cult cell. The Pain Faction, if I recall. These ones are probably the same faction."
"So that's what that was..."
"By the way, since when have cultists been able to create Chimeras?"
"I pride myself on knowing a fair amount about the cults, but... this is the first I'm hearing of it."
Henry shook his head. If a man who was nominally a knight had never heard of it, then Chimeras were almost certainly a brand-new technology for the cult.
This situation is getting bigger and bigger.
"Alright. Last question. What exactly do you lot do?"
I'd already extracted the cult's patrol routes and the location where the hostages were being held, so nearly all of my curiosity had been satisfied. The only thing left was these men's identities. Why on earth had they come all the way out here to aid a cult?
"We are— Mmph!?"
"What? Why—"
"Mmmph!"
...
The same man who'd been so eager to talk until now. But a black line, crawling up from his throat, sealed his mouth shut before another word could escape.
What in the world is...
"A tattoo! The tattoo is moving!"
Noah tore the gagged man's clothing open without a moment's hesitation. Near his collarbone sat a small tattoo of a rat. It was a cute little design, oddly mismatched for such rough-looking men—but there was nothing cute about its behavior. As if it were alive, the creature stretched its tail long and slender, plugging the man's mouth.
"Mmmmmph!"
"Oh dear! This one too!"
Apparently the question I'd asked had served as the trigger. Every one of the men, except the one who'd been mid-answer, found their mouths bound tight in the same fashion. Knowing full well what was coming, the men thrashed and rolled across the dirt floor in a frenzy.
"Damn it! Hold still. How do I deal with this thing..."
"Burn it off!"
Lena snatched a burning branch from the campfire at the center of the tent. A violent idea, but surprisingly not a bad one. Besides, Noah could treat the burns afterward.
"Hold still. I'll get that tattoo off you..."
"Nnnnngh!"
But was it already too late? Before Lena could even press the smoldering wood against the rat, the creature embarked on its next maneuver. Dodging the flame with sewer-rat agility, it skittered up across the man's face in a blur—and like ink bleeding through clear water, it spread across his entire face in a single instant.
POP!
With a small, muffled sound, the heads of the men all burst like fireworks.
"What the hell was that!?"
"Ptui! Ptui! It got in my mouth!"
"...Everyone, outside. Now."
In the space of a heartbeat, the tent had become a gore-soaked paste of blood and brains. Our own hideout nearby met a similar fate, and we were forced to melt down a nearby snowbank for a rough wash.
Once he'd regained a relatively presentable appearance, Henry spoke with a grave expression.
"I believe... that was a [Seal of Silence]."
"Seal of Silence?"
"A method chiefly employed by secret societies. A form of magic used to prevent members from divulging secrets. Though I've never heard of—or seen—one that works through a tattoo."
"Anyone cooperating with cultists is hardly your average criminal organization. Hmm... but the timing of the seal's activation is strange, isn't it?"
"It is."
Noah, having finished cleaning everyone up, agreed with me. Henry, who hadn't quite grasped the point yet, tilted his head.
"Why go to the trouble of hiding the organization's identity? If they had the power to do that, wouldn't it make more sense to have kept the purpose of their mission secret from the start?"
"Ah."
Noah had a point. The loose-lipped men had already given up their purpose and objectives in full. At this point, did the organization's identity even matter?
"...Two hypotheses come to mind. First: the information those men provided was unimportant."
"That's not it. Guiding cultists through the terrain, making periodic contact with people leaving the city to secure supplies—those were genuinely valuable pieces of intel. We even found out where the rendezvous takes place."
"Then, second: their organization is content to let this level of information slip—no, perhaps they leaked it deliberately. Personally, I find this the more suspicious of the two. It would make perfect sense if there was never any need for a Seal of Silence in the first place."
"Oho... that does hold together. Though I have no idea what the intent behind it could be."
Why on earth would they release information capable of sabotaging their own operations? Maybe all of this speculation had been overthinking it. But my gut was telling me something was off.
Swallowing our disgust, we sifted through the headless corpses of the men. But there was not a single belonging or physical trait that might hint at their organization. Time wasn't infinite, so we decided to move promptly on to the next phase.
"Time to go wring the cultists dry."
"Will you be all right, senpai? These ones are notorious for using grotesque abilities. And judging by how only one of the Chimeras we sent ever returned, they must have sensed something amiss."
"It's still a good opportunity. Right now happens to be exactly their worship hour."
"Ahh..."
Yes, we'd been genuinely lucky. Judging by the information gleaned from the now-deceased men, the cult's regular worship service had begun roughly an hour ago. The gap between us and the Chimera we'd been tracking was about an hour as well. There was a decent chance they hadn't yet laid eyes on the one that made it back.
"Word is they haven't changed their alert posture at all, so the odds are good they're still in the dark."
"Also, we pierced both the illusion and alarm wards with Artifacts, so they'll be doubly unaware."
"And from what I hear, their leader is a [Priest]. I've crossed one before. Our odds are more than decent."
At my confident words, Henry nodded with a convinced look on his face.
"Everyone, be careful. I heard they torture their prisoners for no reason, so the ones here are probably of the Pain Faction too—they use a technique that transfers pain. If they pull something strange, don't meet their blades head-on, no matter what."
"Understood."
"Huh? What about you, Mister? And you, Unni?"
"We'll be fine. We've got a countermeasure."
Before setting out, I drilled the warnings firmly into Lena and Henry. One slip, and they could be taken down effortlessly by an ability that inflicted pain in ways they'd never expect. We'd only faced cultists once ourselves, but their movements hadn't been anything exceptional—so with a warning this thorough, it should be more manageable than they'd fear.
"Alright. Let's move."
The plan, roughly speaking, was this: first, we would infiltrate to the heart of the base and rescue all the imprisoned hostages. Then, once Noah and I kicked up a storm and drew their eyes, Lena and Henry would use the opening to move the hostages somewhere safe. Securing the hostages first was a safeguard against the cultists using them as sacrifices mid-battle.
Henry seemed mildly dissatisfied, but he agreed to the plan.
"I won't deny I'd like to earn glory as a knight... but distinguishing courage from recklessness is the very first thing they taught me. I will do what I am able to do."
It was in moments like these that I keenly felt Henry truly was a native of this fantastical world. Actually volunteering for the dangerous role... not the sort of thing you'd expect from a man barely in his twenties.
"Let's go."
We left the blood-soaked tent behind and pressed deeper into the base. Traps cropped up along the way, but we'd long since acquired the information on every one of them. Sticking to safe paths, we slipped past detection and were soon within reach of the cultists' tent.
CRACK! CRACK!
As we neared their tent, a strange sound drifted over. Flesh striking flesh—or, to put it charitably, a whip lashing against someone's skin. Don't tell me these people...?
Lena was already wearing an expression that said she had a pretty good idea. From a distance close enough that our shadows wouldn't fall across the tent, I peered at what they were doing.
CRACK!
Unlike the tent the three men had used, the leather wrapping this one was no ordinary thickness. But the shadows betrayed, in vivid detail, exactly what the cultists were up to. Fortunately(?), it was not the kind of activity Lena had been imagining.
SWISH! SWISH!
Several shadowed figures were whipping each other without mercy. Each time a lash landed on a body, a spray of what could only be blood pattered against the tent's leather, the sound coming through with obscene clarity. For a moment I thought some internal feud had broken out, but the atmosphere inside the tent was far too still for that. Harsh breathing and the slap of leather against skin were all there was—and nowhere, not a trace of anger to be found.
This was worship.
...Are these people insane?
A flicker of doubt crossed my mind, but by now there was no question which faction these cultists belonged to. Pain, obviously. Apparently they worshipped by inflicting agony on one another. The heat still radiating from the tent suggested the service had a long way yet to run.
We lowered our bodies as planned and crept even closer.
...
True to form for an organization deranged by faith, there wasn't a single proper patrol on duty during worship hours. No—if anything, even the men who should have been patrolling were taking part in the service themselves. Zealots to the last, I suppose. Thanks to that, not one of us was spotted until we found the tent where the hostages were held.
The guard was a single Chimera. We baited it with a thrown snowball and snapped its neck before it could let out so much as a shriek.
We opened the tent's door and stepped inside. Dim lighting... and hostages behind bars, greeting our arrival.
"...People?"
"It's people!"
"Yes, yes. We're people. Everyone, please stay quiet."
The interior reeked of the accumulated stench of unwashed bodies, a foulness so thick it hung in the air. It was bad enough that even Lena—well accustomed to smells like this—gagged. But the gaunt, haggard hostages seemed to have long since lost the ability to register stench at all; at the sight of us, so unlike their captors, they could only cheer in faint, hushed voices.
"Henry, gather everyone and— Henry?"
Henry stood rooted in place, staring at something. Wondering if the scene had struck him anew, I glanced at his face—but there was nothing there but sheer astonishment. At last, he opened his mouth and stammered, as if he couldn't believe his own eyes.
"...M-Miss Agassi?"
"Henry?"
From the deepest corner of the tent, a small-framed woman answered his shock—the only one confined alone in a cell, apart from all the others.