Low-Fantasy Occultist

The darkness of the hidden passage was a blessing, for it masked the violent tremors wracking Nick’s body.

As he walked, he stumbled against the uneven masonry, his boots dragging across the dusty floorboards. So far, he’d managed to hold back the worst of it, but with his mana dangerously low, the ritual backlash hit him in successive waves, compounding the severe drain and the searing pain radiating from his scorched ribs.

Rhea was there in an instant, slipping her shoulder under his arm to keep him upright. The astringent scent of bitter herbs filled the cramped space as she uncorked a glass vial with her teeth. She pressed it to his lips, forcing a foul-tasting liquid down his throat. It burned like cheap alcohol, but it sent a numbing chill through his overtaxed mana coils, staving off the worst of the sickness.

“Drink it all,” she whispered, barely audible over the muffled alarms ringing through the keep.

Nick swallowed the rest of the potion, closing his eyes as a wave of nausea surged over him.

The physical pain was manageable, but his mind was in agony.

The abrupt breaking of the Ritual of Icarus had left his soul raw and exposed, and only its sturdiness had kept him going for so long.

Even in the pitch-black corridor, blinding flashes of golden light seared his vision. The Sun was still there, a lingering phantom in his consciousness, demanding that it finish its judgment. It wanted to scour his soul, burn away the unnatural power he had cultivated, and reduce him to ash alongside the homunculi.

At the same time, the creeping tendrils of the Void clawed at the edges of his sanity. The whispers slithered through the dark, a thousand overlapping voices hissing promises of power and the destruction of his enemies.

They offered to flood his empty core, devour the Sun's blazing light, and tear the Lesser Demons in the hallways outside into bloody ribbons. He only needed to lower his guard. He only needed to let them through.

Nick clenched his jaw, tasting blood as he ground his teeth. He forced [Blasphemy] to flare, wrapping the Trait around his fractured mind like a child clutching a blanket against the monsters in the dark.

He refused to give an inch to the heavens or the abyss. Surrendering to either force would grant him the power to survive the night, but it would completely overwrite his humanity, turning him into a vessel for forces beyond mortal comprehension.

He would survive on his own terms, or die trying.

Gaelen pressed a hand to the wall ahead of them, seemingly sensing their location through that alone. He navigated purely by memory and the innate connection his blood shared with the estate's foundational wards.

“We have to keep moving,” he urged softly, his amber eyes gleaming in the dark. “The guards are still sweeping the second floor, but the demons are moving much faster.”

Nick forced himself to stand straight, leaning slightly against the Shard to take the weight off his scorched side. He nodded briefly, following Gaelen deeper into the labyrinthine walls of the manor.

Despite their hurry, they still moved at an agonizingly slow pace. The passage wound tightly around the keep, occasionally forcing them to crawl beneath low arches or squeeze past structural supports. Every step sent a jolt of pain through Nick’s ribs.

As the muffled sounds of a violent commotion echoed through the stone to their left, they stopped.

Gaelen held up a fist, signaling them to stop. He pressed his ear to the masonry, and Nick leaned in, relying on his enhanced senses to catch the voices in the adjacent room—likely one of the upper servant quarters.

“Where are the access points?” a harsh voice demanded. The sharp crack of a mailed fist striking flesh followed.

“I told you, I know nothing!” an older woman cried out, her voice trembling with pain and terror.

Given her age and the fact that she’d been singled out, it was likely she was among the few original Elpen retainers kept alive to maintain the manor, deemed too insignificant to slaughter.

“Do you think we believe you?” a second voice snarled. “It is only a matter of time before Lord Ephor’s Enforcers lose their patience and tear through the manor. We will find them either way, but this is your only chance to be useful and make your death painless, woman! We know you served the old Lord!”

“I spit on you for allowing demons into these halls,” the old woman wheezed, her voice suddenly stripped of fear and replaced by pure spite. “And I spit on Ephor Ultimer. The heirs have returned. You will burn as they exact their rightful revenge!”

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A sudden wrongness bled through the stone.

The temperature in the passage plummeted, yet the stone itself grew warm. Nick clamped a hand over Rhea’s mouth, pinning her against the wall as the power of a Lesser Demon flooded the adjacent room.

The guards on the other side shrieked in sudden panic, their bravado evaporating at its presence.

“Wait! We are interrogating her for—”

The man’s plea was cut short by the wet sound of tearing flesh. Fell flames roared to life, consuming the room. The old woman screamed as they took her, the sound echoing through the stone and driving a spike of fury into their hearts.

Gaelen clawed at the wall so harshly that his nails broke, yet he stayed completely silent, honoring the woman's sacrifice.

Heavy footsteps echoed as the Lesser Demon crossed the room. It stopped directly on the other side of the wall, mere inches from Nick’s face.

It must have some sense of our presence in the ether, he realized with a jolt of fear, though he knew it couldn’t be too precise, as the blood wards kept them shrouded.

It dragged its jagged claws down the masonry, and the stone turned cherry-red as the blistering heat bled through the mortar, drying the bloodstained fabric of Nick’s coat.

The Void's whispers flooded Nick's mind, a chaotic crescendo begging to be unleashed, promising to tear the demon’s heart out through the wall. Nick squeezed his eyes shut, reinforcing [Blasphemy] to keep his presence as hidden as possible.

The demon snuffed the air one last time, let out a frustrated growl, then turned and lumbered out of the room to hunt elsewhere.

Gaelen let out a slow, trembling breath, pulling himself away from the cooling stone. He looked back at Nick, and only cold resolve remained in his eyes.

“Almost there,” he promised, though it was impossible to tell whether he meant the passage or their path to revenge.

Cautiously, they resumed their descent, and the passage spiraled downward until the air cooled again and smelled strongly of wet earth and horse manure. They had reached the ground level, arriving at the end of the line.

An iron grate, disguised from the outside as part of the wall, blocked their path. Moonlight and the flickering orange glare of courtyard torches bled through the slats. They were in a stall, though not the one they’d entered through. Likely the one meant for the knights.

Gaelen crouched, peering through the bars.

“I see four guards,” he reported, his voice barely audible. “But they are all Knights. They are pacing right in front of the grate, and going back to find another exit would take too long. We must go through them.”

Nick shifted his weight, preparing to draw on the ether to take at least one down. The moment he reached for the ether, however, a wave of blinding vertigo hit him. His knees buckled, and he caught himself on the wall, his breath coming in gasps.

“You have done enough, Nick,” Gaelen said, turning back and resting a steady hand on his shoulder. “Let us take care of this.”

With some effort, Nick looked up, meeting his friend’s gaze. He gave a tight nod, trying to push through the pain.

Gaelen turned to the grate. He traced the locking mechanism, drew a thin blade from his belt, and disengaged the rusted tumblers with great care. After some fiddling, the grate swung open with a faint groan, swinging outward into the shadowed recess behind the stables.

With one last look at them, he slipped through the opening and disappeared into the dark.

Nick leaned forward, watching through the gap. The four Knights were tense, their swords drawn as they scanned the courtyard. They were completely focused on the keep, watching the flashes of fell flames illuminate the upper windows.

They must think we’re still inside. I doubt anyone we fought survived the demonic fires, so they weren’t told we took the secret passages.

That lack of information meant they failed to notice Gaelen emerge from the shadows behind them.

He closed the distance to the rearmost guard, slipping his cursed blade through the small gap between the man's helm and gorget, severing the spinal cord instantly. He caught the falling body and lowered it silently into the mud.

Sensing something was wrong, a knight turned, his mouth opening to shout an alarm. Gaelen pivoted, driving his boot into the knee of the next-closest enemy, collapsing his stance, then threw a dagger. The blade buried itself to the hilt in the man's throat.

The remaining two knights leaped back with agility, taking positions on either side of Gaelen, clearly intending to punish any further attack.

For a brief moment, there was only silence as they stared at each other. Nick could feel very little, given how muddled his senses were, but he thought he sensed some kind of respect.

These knights, it seemed, were made of different stuff than the others. Perhaps they could tell Gaelen was there for revenge, or maybe they simply hated that they worked for a lord who consorted with demons. Nonetheless, they had no intention of letting them pass, and so all three moved at once.

Gaelen ducked beneath a sweeping horizontal strike, stepping inside the knight’s reach. He took a gauntlet to the neck for the effort, but managed to drive his recovered dagger up through the armpit, piercing the heart. He used the dying man's heavy plate armor as a shield to deflect the fourth man’s downward chop.

With only the two of them left, there was little chance of using chaos to his advantage, and Gaelen began ceding ground, both because of his shorter reach and the other man’s greater strength.

Yet just as it looked like Gaelen was about to be trapped, one of the corpses was hurled into their path as the ground rippled. Using the body as a shield, he threw the last Knight off balance, and Gaelen closed the final gap. He swept the man's legs out from under him, dropping him into the mud, and finished the fight with a strike to the temple.

Rhea let out a tired breath, lowering the hand she’d used for the transmutation.

Gaelen wiped his blades on the fallen knight’s tabard, then gestured for them to follow.

Nick and Rhea emerged from the passage, keeping low as they hurried across the blood-slicked mud.

Together, they sprinted through the shadowy courtyard, using the chaos to mask their approach. The outer wall loomed ahead, thick with enchanted stone and iron spikes meant to keep people from getting in, not to keep them from going out.

Gaelen cupped his hands, offering Rhea a boost. She scrambled up the masonry, then threw herself over the top. Gaelen followed, scaling the wall with effortless agility.

Nick gripped the rough stone, for once relying entirely on his raw strength. His muscles burned, and his scorched ribs screamed in protest, but he hauled himself up, throwing a leg over the iron spikes.

As he balanced atop the wall, preparing to drop into the city's alleys below, a catastrophic presence appeared in the ether.

The feel of it alone forced the air from his lungs. The ambient mana warped and bowed, groaning under the pressure, and it took him a moment to realize it was coming from a single source.

Almost dreading what he’d find, Nick looked back over his shoulder.

Descending from the night sky, wreathed in layers of enchantment, was a man.

He floated down, almost gently, and the moment his boots touched the manor's roof, the world rippled. The remaining wards snapped shut, and a visible dome of shimmering red mana enveloped the grounds, locking the fortress down.

Nick dropped backward, falling into the dark alley just as the dome sealed over the wall.

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