Primordial Villain With A Slave Harem - Chapter 1487 Holy Offering

Chapter 1487  Holy Offering

“Khm!”

Multiple coughs erupted from behind the pair. Several of Quinlan’s women cleared their throats in pointed unison, a chorus of disapproval rehearsed through months of exposure to this exact behavior.

But no one coughed louder than Sylvaris Vaelorith.

The Vaelorith matriarch stood three steps behind her daughter. Pale skin, flawless, carrying the luminous quality of moonlight given form. Silver-white hair fell straight to her waist. Her eyes, the color of a winter lake, were wide open.

She looked like she had seen a ghost.

No.

Worse.

A promiscuous daughter.

“Seraphiel Vaelorith!” Sylvaris stomped.

“Mom.” Seraphiel’s voice shifted instantly, turning warm and concerned. Completely fake, too. “The clan needs you back home, isn’t that correct?”

Sylvaris blinked.

“Granny retired so she could enjoy her twilight years in peace. She’s been looking forward to it for thousands of years. But with you here, there’s no one managing the estate, the finances, the trade agreements, so she is forced to work again…” Seraphiel shook her head with exaggerated sadness. “It’s irresponsible, really. I can’t help but bring your filial commitment to your mother into question. I’m starting to think that you’re a bad daughter.”

Sylvaris stared at her daughter.

This girl.

This little girl, who used to chase butterflies in the garden until she tripped over her own feet and cried until Sylvaris kissed her scraped knees. Who used to crawl into her bed during thunderstorms and press her tiny face into her mother’s neck and whisper that she would protect Mommy from the scary noises. Who used to pick wildflowers and present them with both hands like they were priceless artifacts, beaming so wide her eyes nearly disappeared.

That girl was trying to ship her mother off so she could get her ass grabbed in public without being judged for it.

“You…” Sylvaris’s voice trembled. “You are trying to send me away.”

“I’m trying to think of your poor mother.”

“So you can behave like a harlot in peace!”

“Mother, we’re in public. Please choose your words with more consideration.”

“Says the woman being actively groped while arguing with her mother in front of the royal elven army!”

Seraphiel placed a hand over her chest. “I am a woman expressing healthy affection for my lover. If anything, you should be supportive.”

“Supportive?!” Sylvaris’s composure cracked further. “He grabbed your- in front of- and you purred!”

“It was more of a surprised exhale, really.”

“IT WAS A PURR, SERAPHIEL VEALORITH!”

“Stop messing with your mother,” Quinlan slapped Seraphiel’s butt one final time as he stepped past her.

Sylvaris flinched as if struck by lightning.

Seraphiel purred again.

The elven rangers looked away in unison.

Now that Quinlan relinquished his hold on the girl, Sylvaris seized her daughter by the arm and hauled her backward with the grip of a woman whose patience had died, been buried, and was now being desecrated. Her whispers were sharp and rapid, the kind of dressing-down that didn’t need volume to strip paint off walls.

Seraphiel’s giggles could still be heard.

Quinlan stepped forward and stopped beside Serelis at the ridge’s edge.

Below, the siege preparations had begun.

Dwarven crews were hauling the first engines out of the tree line. Heavy frames on reinforced wheels, pulled by teams of stocky figures who moved with the grim efficiency of people who had done this too many times to count. Artillery pieces followed, their runed barrels catching sunlight as they were angled toward Whisperfield’s walls.

Serelis watched the deployment without expression.

“They’ll have full positioning within a few minutes,” she said. “Covenant forces are already beneath the city. Once the bombardment begins, it should go the same as the others.”

Quinlan studied the walls. The gate. The garrison patrols still moving along the battlements in organized patterns, unaware of the tunnels beneath their feet.

“How many civilians?”

“Our estimates say over a hundred thousand, mostly human with a smaller slave population in the eastern quarter.”

He nodded. As the capital of the county, it made sense to have so many citizens. The size of the city itself was much bigger than any of the frontier strongholds he’d helped bring down.

Behind them, Sylvaris’s whispered lecture had escalated. Fragments drifted over. “…raised you with VALUES…” and “…your ancestors would WEEP…” and a very distinct “…I did NOT spend a hundred years nurturing you so you could-”

Seraphiel’s response was inaudible, but the giggle that followed was not.

Quinlan’s lips twitched. His first elven lover was far too cheeky.

He returned his attention to the city.

As soon as he did so, Quinlan’s eyes narrowed.

Light.

Faint, golden, pulsing from somewhere inside the walls. It rose through the streets in a wave that traveled outward from the city center, sinking into the earth as it spread.

Serelis saw it too. Her ears twitched.

From beneath the ground, thin and distant, came the sound of screeching. High-pitched. Agonized. Dead things being forced back into death.

“What’s that?” Quinlan asked.

Serelis’s expression hardened.

“Bad news.”

…

The central square of Whisperfield was packed.

Everyone the city could spare stood shoulder to shoulder beneath the banners of House Caldern, the ruling family of the Whisperfield county. Soldiers in armor lined the front ranks. Behind them, merchants, laborers, craftsmen, and their families filled the square all the way to the steps of the temple. Children sat on their parents’ shoulders. The elderly leaned on canes and each other.

Over a hundred thousand people called this city home. Today, every one of them was listening.

Count Aldren Caldern stood on the raised platform at the square’s center, armored from throat to boot, his greying hair cropped short, and his jaw set like a man who had already made peace with what was coming.

He did not waste time with pleasantries.

“You know what’s out there,” he said, his voice carrying across the square with the projection of a veteran commander. “The hairy midgets are assembling their bombards in our forests as we speak. The leaf munchers and the furries have cut our escape routes and are watching every road, every trail, every gap in the tree line.”

A ripple of unease moved through the crowd.

“And the worst of it.” His jaw tightened. “The unholy pests are crawling beneath our very feet.”

The ripple became a tremor. Mothers pulled children closer. Soldiers gripped their weapons. The enemy was already inside the walls before the first arrow flew. Everyone knew it.

Aldren let the silence hold for two heartbeats.

“But do not fret.”

He turned and extended his hand toward the steps behind him.

“For the Goddess will protect us.”

A woman ascended the platform.

She was tall, lean, dressed in white robes edged with golden thread that had been worn thin from years of use. Her hair was silver-white, pulled back from a gaunt face. A scar ran from her left temple to her jaw, old and clean. Undead claws.

Arch Priestess Velara carried a stone basin in both hands. The artifact was ancient, its surface carved with scripture so old the language predated the kingdom itself. She set it on the pedestal at the center of the platform without a word.

The crowd went still.

Velara drew a short, ceremonial blade from her belt.

She placed her palm over the basin and cut.

Blood ran.

It hit the stone, and the scripture drank it. The carvings filled red, then gold, then white as the artifact consumed the offering and converted it into something pure. Light climbed the basin’s surface in branching lines, growing brighter with each heartbeat, fed by the steady stream from the priestess’s hand.

Velara’s face paled. Her lips pressed into a thin line. She did not stop.

More blood. More light.

The artifact pulsed.