Chapter 455: What took you so long?

Belladonna sat outside the grounds of the huge castle, which naturally took the form of a colossal tree that towered over the entire city and protected it with its canopy of leaves. Or at least it used to, but it had seemingly died alongside the city.

All of its leaves had been lost, leaving its branches bare as they clutched at the sky like a thousand long dead hands, reaching for salvation.

This tree was, surprisingly, not the same type of tree as the ones that filled the Elven city, and were used to craft seemingly every house.

That was probably for the best, as an Iron Wood tree of this size would cause serious devastation to the city it was supposed to be protecting if it ever shed any of its giant razor sharp leaves.

In fact, Belladonna did not know what type of tree this was, other than a dead one.

What she classified as its ’grounds’ was the area in which its roots were spread out, which had been grown in a protective ring around the central grand tree.

This root ring was not just to keep things out, but seemingly kept in whatever was protecting the castle. Although whether that was because it couldn’t get out, or simply didn’t want to, was unclear. However Belladonna’s guess was on the latter.

From her position atop this very root ring, she could see the aftermath of the ’Unseen Killers’ slaughter.

Blood stained the stone floors, which had been shaped into a two toned pattern of hexagonal tiles, like a strange chess board. Even from where she sat, Belladonna’s nose could pick out the different scents with a single twitch.

She could tell the different creatures apart by the smell of their blood. Figuring out which bloodstains belonged to the Orcs and which belonged to the Beasts. There was also many with a more putrid stench to them, by Belladonna’s own senses.

That had to belong to the undead invaders. Whatever had killed everything here, had been doing so for a long, long time.

Yet despite all of the blood, there was not a body in sight. Just like the Orc’s said, everything had been dumped outside of the walls, where a multitude of scavengers had been tearing into the corpses and enjoying a delectable feast, before Belladonna came along and killed them all.

As an experiment she had tossed a few of the scavengers down there, just to see what would happen.

The dead ones were immediately teleported out of the walls and onto the corpse piles, while the ones that survived the drop stayed alive for a varying amount of time.

Some simply stayed put, their legs broken from the fall, as they cried in pain and for help from their kin before they succumbed to their injuries and joined their family on the corpse pile.

While those with functioning legs scampered around in a panic like headless chickens, before they actually became headless chickens.

Seemingly at random, their bodies just collapsed into piles of diced meat, their blood splattering across the floor before the remnants of meat were teleported out.

Even from her vantage point, Belladonna couldn’t quite tell what was killing them.

"See anything interesting?" Revenant asked, as he landed on the wall next to her. The faint sound of galloping hooves coming from beneath them.

"Yes, a few things. But nothing actually useful. There’s no pattern to the deaths, nothing clear cut except from the cuts on the corpses themselves.

What took you so long?" She added bluntly, sparing him a glance and immediately regretting it when she saw the smug look on his face.

"God, is your little pony really worth that face?" Belladonna asked with a groan.

"Yes, it is. Once we are done here, I’ll merge the souls of the Nightmare and my knight, and give Golden Princes exactly what they deserve."

"They don’t deserve anything that you want to give them." Belladonna grumbled.

A wicked smile spread across Revenant’s face as he leaned close to her.

"Oh really? Not a single one of their membership? Not even say... A certain golden haired enchantress?"

The wall cracked underneath Belladonna as she slammed her fist into it, her teeth gritting as she glared daggers at Revenant.

"You know that’s different."

He laughed, holding his hands up in mock surrender.

"Of course, Of course. Gods, I didn’t realise how far she had crawled under your skin. Do you think if I took a peek in your mind that I would find her sitting in there?

But you’re right. She’s just one rotten apple amongst the bunch. But that rot spreads, and soon enough all of them end up rotten and disgusting."

Revenants smile faded, as he met Belladonna’s glare with one of his own.

"I’m just going to make sure that the rot doesn’t spread any further, and if that means burning the fruit stand to the ground, so be it.

So if you want your little boyfriend to survive, despite everything he has done, then you better figure out how to get her out of both of your heads."

Belladonna grit her teeth tighter.

"He’s not..." She started to say, wanting to say ’He’s not my boyfriend.’ But the words caught in her throat and refused to come out.

"He hasn’t done anything yet." She managed to say instead.

"Maybe not from your perspective. To me, he has done more than enough to warrant a slow and painful death.

Just be lucky I’m feeling nice enough to wave that, because of you. But it’s not a niceness you should take for granted."

They held each others gaze for a few silent seconds, glaring at each other, before Revenant stood up straight and clapped his hands.

"Anyways, I’m here now and with an amazing new Steed to ride valiantly in on and besides, I don’t see the other two here. So I don’t know why you are getting on my case about taking so long."

Belladonna smirked, gesturing to a relatively well structured house across the road from the root wall.

"They’re over there resting. I had to leave Beans with them so I could supervise them, because Raev keeps trying to teach Figg different drugs to grow with his magic and Figg just likes the plants too much to say no.

Yeah, that’s right. Even the cat beat you here."

Revenant glanced at the house before scoffing,

"Whatever... Well, are we just going to sit here and bicker, or are we going to go down there and get ourselves killed by whatever this thing is?"

"I vote option two, although I might skip the dying part. It doesn’t seem very convenient to my plans."

Belladonna said sarcastically as she stood up straight, brushing herself.

"Yeah, it never does." Revenant said with a sigh, as the two of them stared down at the blood filled courtyard that was beckoning them like the call of the void.

After a few seconds of silence, Revenant leaned over to Belladonna and said,

"Five Nux says it’s an invisible monster."

Belladonna glanced at him before scoffing and shaking his outstretched hand.

"Deal. Just don’t cheap out on me when you’re wrong."