Realm of Monsters - Chapter 720: The End of Suffering

Chapter 720: The End of Suffering

  All throughout the city, the people of Murkton were in disarray. Nobles hiding in their manors believed themselves to be safe from the war unfolding in the Water Market. A hundred guards were stationed outside while the rest of their forces bolstered the city’s army ranks. 

  Families sat in the parlor sipping wine to calm their nerves, when a pillar of cold light fell from the moon and eviscerated the head of the house and anyone and anything nearby. The survivors screamed out in shock, staring into a crater where their loved ones had only just been.

  Prominent merchants of the city fared no better. Yet it was on the battlefield that the pillars caused the greatest change. Generals and commanders leading their troops were suddenly engulfed by the lunar light and obliterated. Archmages battling against the Sylvan warriors or providing a defensive wall for the orcs to evacuate, were all consumed by the light.

  Soldiers stood in confusion, unable to understand what had just happened before their very eyes. The goblins held no such feelings. The sight of their enemies’ obliteration invigorated them. Cries of Lunis and Lunae resounded on their lips as they charged upon the broken ranks of the orcs and the defenseless citizens.

  Bellum watched the scene unfold from high in the clouds, horror etched upon her face. “What have you done…?”

  “I have eliminated every prominent leader in the city. Tell me, how will the Murkton armies fare without their commanders?” Lunae said in a cold tone.

  “They didn’t deserve to die.”

  “Please,” Lunae scoffed.

  “Some of them were innocent! They only were trying to protect their own, if that.”

  “My people didn’t only try to protect their own. When the Schism occurred, they opened their lands to the stranded, including Morrigan I and her mercenary company. And how did she and her brother Katag repay that kindness? They betrayed the people of this city, murdered the men, raped the women, and enslaved their children. This time we will not be merciful, this time we will end all of them.”

  Lunae cocked her head to the side, her eyes glowing a bright silver, “Starting with the temples to those outer realm gods.”

  Bellum gritted her teeth and cursed under her breath. “Damn you! Stop!” She crashed into Lunae, her orichalcum sword swirling in black flames.

  Regalis extended from Lunae’s sleeve, silver threads transforming into a shield that blocked the black flames. Lunae stared at her niece, eyes resigned. “You’ll have to kill me.”

~~~

  An array of broken and bloodied corpses was strewn across the plaza. A god wolf stood amidst the bodies, frost-mist curling off his silver fur. The moonlight gave his coat a white sheen that seemed to almost glow in the night.

  The wolf turned, sniffing the air in search of prey, but there were none left, only the family he had sworn to protect. The fear in the children’s eyes awoke him from his bloodlust and he blinked his lilac eyes a few times before coming to. With a deep breath, he mustered his control back from his instincts and transformed. Starlight enveloped the massive wolf and swirled down into the small figure of a blue godling.

  “It’s okay, everything is going to be okay,” Stryg raised his hands in a reassuring gesture.

  Catherine nodded fullheartedly, but her children seemed less convinced. It was only then that Stryg noticed he was covered in blood and nothing else. The fire from the battle mage had left his clothes nothing but ash. Svartna, Nameless, and Krikolm lay somewhere in the plaza, but he wasn’t quite sure where. There was so much blood and too many corpses everywhere.

  Channeling Black, Stryg willed a new cloak of shadows over his body. He needed to find his weapons. “Svartna,” he called out softly.

  The spear, already awake and brimming with power, flew into his hand with just a simple call of its name. The orichalcum weapon felt good in his grip, almost as if he was stretching his hand after it had fallen asleep.

  Henry’s whimper brought him back to the moment. The children were scared. His weapons would come later. Stryg tossed Svartna over his back, shadows forming a strap harness. He walked over to the family, careful to not move too fast, and knelt next to the children. “It’s okay. You don’t have to be scared. Everything is going to be alright.”

  It was then that the pillars of light struck from the sky, crashing down all across the city. Every blast sent faint tremors across the ground. The children clung to their mother and buried their faces in her waist. Catherine ran her hands over their back and whispered soothing words.

  “What are they?” Catherine looked up at the sky.

  “I’m not sure…” Stryg muttered, but he had an idea. He had seen such a light before, when his party had been attacked by a dragon on their way to the Undergrowth. At the time, he wasn’t certain what it meant, but now he recognized Lunae’s power as if it were almost his own.

  Green mana pooled under his feet and he willed a small tower of stone to rise with it. The tower raised him up until he was over a dozen meters in the air, giving him an expansive view of the city. All around the Water Market, the commoner neighborhoods, and even the weather neighborhoods, fires burned. 

  Where before the soldiers of Murkton had been holding their own, now their lines had broken. Orc soldiers ran for their lives as Sylvan warriors rose out from the mist and attacked them from the back.

  It wasn’t only the soldiers. Orc men, women, and children were being dragged out of their homes and cut down without mercy. The streets were littered with blood and the sky filled with smoke.

  Stryg glanced down at the plaza below and saw the mound of bodies he had left in his wake. Orcs and goblins both lay dead, felled by his hand. His gaze landed on Catherine and her children, and an understanding dawned on him.

  “…This is wrong,” he whispered.

  For so long, he held resentment in his heart for what Murkton and the orcs had done to his people. He had wanted them to suffer. His time in that dock village, witnessing the callousness and depravity of the orcs in the tavern, had left him bitter and wishing for Murkton to fall. But now, he realized this wasn’t the way.

  Stryg wasn’t certain what the right way to go about all of this, but he knew this massacre of the innocent and guilty alike was wrong. He willed the tower to sink back down.

  “My lord, what should we do?” Catherine asked with some hesitation.

  Stryg could see the faith that burned in her eyes, but there was fear there as well. Fear for her family. “Stay here. You’ll be safe.”

  “My lord?” Catherine glanced around worriedly. The sound of fighting could be heard from not too far away. 

  Stryg closed his eyes and focused on the bodies all around him. The power in his second heart felt somewhat new, unnatural, but he wrestled it and willed it to bend to his words.

  “Protect them,” he commanded in a chilling voice. A wave of chaos swept out with his words and filled the corpses on the ground. Mangled limbs began to reattach themselves and broken bones set into place. Undead orcs shuffled to their feet and picked up their weapons.

  Black sand coalesced around small skeletons and reformed into the shapes of goblins, but where once their skin was a forest-green, now it was deathly pale grey. Stryg stared at them, surprised. No amount of black or elemental death magic could have salvaged what was left of those goblins. He supposed divine magic was something else entirely.

  “What are they?” Anna asked, gripping her mother’s skirt.

  “They are extensions of my will. They shall protect you from any harm. Do not stray far from them, they will not stray far from you,” Stryg said.

  “We understand. Thank you, my lord,” Catherine bowed her head. “We shall follow your words without misgivings.”

  “Thanks,” Stryg gave a wry smile.

  A boom rang out in the sky as golden fire lit up a cloud and a pair of tiny silhouettes. 

  “I have to stop this,” he muttered to himself.

  Stryg closed his eyes once more and let chaos flow freely through his body. Like before with the wolf, he imagined his body taking the shape of an owl, but this time, instead of drawing chaos from the Sigte mark, he drew power from his second heart.

  Starlight erupted from his chest and suffused his body before disappearing a moment later. But when he looked down, he was still the same. This wasn’t like his wolf form.

  The power of Lunae coursing through his veins felt so natural. The thought of his goddess mother sent a familiar warmth through his chest. Yet when he thought of his father, uncertainty filled him.

  He now knew without a shadow of a doubt where he came from and who he was. Death was his father, but what that entailed for the relationship between them… Stryg did not know. 

  “I am the son of Death. I am me. And that is enough,” Stryg whispered. Starlight suffused his body again and formed a pair of silver wings over his back. His lips curled into a half-smile. It wasn’t perfect. It was him and it would do.

  Glancing up at the sky, he located the clashing of light amidst the dark clouds, and beat his wings with a powerful snap of wind. He shot up into the night sky, a small figure wrapped in shadows, borne upon the wind with wings of starlight.

~~~

  Bellum watched from the sky as pillars of light fell from the moon upon the temples of the city without stopping until only snow and craters remained. Something strange caught her eye. Her own temple of war had been left untouched.

  “Why leave them be?” Bellum asked and pointed at her temple with her sword.

  “I thought you wanted me to spare the orcs,” Lunae said, her face a mask of impassivity.

  “You still care. Even after everything, you still care about me.”

  “Of course, I care about you. You’re my niece. I will always love you, even if you point that sword at me.”

  “If you love me enough to spare the orcs within my temple, then spare the others, too. You have Divine Sight. Look at the homes of the innocent. How many of them are your goblins killing? The goblins of this city once suffered horrors unimaginable. Why would you seek to inflict the same upon others? You’ve won. Let these people go. Please. For my sake.”

  “…I can’t.”

  “Yes, you can. You are the goddess of the moon. Only you can call off your warriors.”

  Lunae hung her head and stared at the city below. “…You’re right. I will not be like those Scarlet Realm orcs. I did not come here to cause suffering.” She waved her hand and an aurora borealis bloomed in the night sky, a range of colors weaving among the clouds.

  The goblins below noticed the divine signal in the sky and immediately began to retreat. Bellum watched in amazement as the swarm of frost-mist pulled back. “You did it.” She sighed in relief. “You really did it—”

  A mass of chaos swelled in Lunae and did not stop growing. She drew upon the chaos and beams of moonlight until her body itself began to glow with silver light.

  “What are you doing?” Bellum’s eyes slowly widened.

  “I did not come here to cause suffering. I came to end it.” Lunae raised her arms to the sides until they were even with her shoulders.

  The lake surrounding Murkton began to tremble with massive ripples. The rivers connecting to the lake began to feed more water into it at unnatural speeds, forming a giant wave. All the while, the Sylvan warriors retreated back to their ships.

  “You’re going to drown them?” Bellum whispered in horror.

  The sea gates of the Water Market had been destroyed. The most powerful of blue mages slain. There were none who could prevent the coming apocalyptic tidal waves.

  “I did not come here to cause the suffering of children,” Lunae said. “But they cannot survive and grow up to become threats to the future children of Lunis. I will end the lives of Murkton in one fell swoop, once and for all.”