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SYSTEM ADDENDUM ADDED BY [SYSTEM CORE 1]
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Iridius waited in the throne room’s antechamber, his platinum blade gripped in both hands. Its six-foot length exuded a penetrating heat as he channeled his patron’s gift through the blade, the Lady’s power a never-ending font of strength. He muttered his devotions, stoking the fire of his invocations until they were as deep and scorching as the Plates themselves.
There was only one path to the Stonelord, and he was its champion.
Iridius had fought c’thons before. He’d slain a fair few, and he knew their ways. His helm was an absolute shield against the insanities they afflicted, the holy energies in his blade one of their most potent weaknesses, and its razor’s edge a close second. C’thons were monstrously strong, but their flesh was easily parted while in the first layer. Their overreliance on their bodies was a fatal flaw, and one that Iridius ant to exploit.
A bead of sweat ran down Iridius’s polish, evaporating before the moisture could make it farther than an inch from the pore that had released it. Even through his cinnabar armor, Iridius could feel the death trap around him pressing in on his body. The pure, essence-drenched topaz that made up every inch of the antechamber was burning through its reserves at maximum output, flooding the room with splendorous light. No spot of dark remained, and even the champion’s own shadow had been banished by the inescapable bright.
It was blinding, with heat enough to reduce what sparse finery that once adorned the room to less than ash. The pressure it exuded was enough to crush a normal man to dust, and would have given even Iridius pause, had he not been bloodbound to its exclusions. The fiend tearing its way down from the highest dungeons would have no place to hide, no shade from which to launch its attacks, nor would it be able to rely on its blistering speed under the combined weight of the topaz and Iridius himself.
That’s what Iridius believed, anyway.
A pool of utter darkness slithered beneath the antechamber’s airtight entryway, causing the champion to furrow his brow. To defy the antechamber’s light was no small feat, and the figure that rose from the dark floated up as though the chamber’s weight ant nothing.
Iridius studied the horrid thing as it seed to study him in return. At first glance, it appeared a mass of feathered tentacles as so many c’thons preferred, but beneath the cephaloid head and behind the writhing mass of feelers was a more humanoid body than he’d co to expect. It was still a monstrous thing, a mockery of bipedal anatomy. Its arms were too long, and its fingers held too many joints. Its sickly green skin was so thin as to be nearly translucent, stretched taut over dense musculature covered in thick, pulsing veins.
Most curiously, a jagged ivory crown sat atop its bulbous head, its palisades coated in shifting, shimring blue. Iridius didn’t know what to make of that, strange as it was to see such a thing on a c’thon, but it mattered little.
Iridius raised his blade a crack, prepared for the fury the c’thon would unleash the mont it realized that his mind was an unassailable fortress. However, rather than attacking, the creature tilted its head slightly to one side and spoke.
“You are a guardian of this realm, yes?”it asked.
Iridius narrowed his eyes and debated whether the question was so sort of trick. C’thons were nefarious beings, twisting their words and promises ever to their own advantage. Still, Iridius would not besmirch his honor by attacking an enemy willing to engage in a dialogue. The Lady demanded as much. Of course, the Lady’s benevolence was tempered by pragmatism. He would strike at the slightest hint of hostility.
“I am,” said Iridius.
“And are you a guardian of the Stonelord?”
Iridius nodded. “Such is my duty.”
The c’thon appeared to consider this for a mont.
“To which is your duty greater?” it asked.
Iridius looked over the being again, wondering if he were truly speaking with a c’thon.
“We all serve the realm,” said Iridius. “Even the Stonelord must bend to her needs.”
“And what if your Stonelord no longer serves this realm?”
“Carve your words. Do you claim the Stonelord has betrayed his throne?”
The c’thon raised a hand, and Iridius tightened the grip on his weapon, but the creature rely made a slow, ponderous gesture as it studied the walls and ceiling.
“Your Stonelord is a puppet of Brood King Nha’thubo. A c’thon serves nothing but itself. Thus, your Stonelord no longer serves this realm.” The monster flexed its fingers, languidly drumming each talon along its palm before its eyes returned to Iridius. “Logic. Did I use it correctly?”
Iridius spent a mont puzzling out the c’thon’s question.
“Groundless indictnts,” said Iridius. “The word of a c’thon is poison.”
“I will prove my claim, should you allow into the throne room.” The creature raised a hand, as though to make a promise. “I will even attempt to spare the lives of your royal guard, who have beco Nha’thubo’s drones.”
“That promise is little more than gem-studded blackmail,” said Iridius.
The c’thon made a deep purring noise. “It is not. Once the Brood King is slain, his slaves will be freed of his command. However, I will slay the drones if they attempt to harm . If you were to escort inside, they would be less likely to attack, and therefore die.”
“I will not stand aside,” said Iridius. The request was so outrageous, he felt no need to elaborate.
“Hmm,” The c’thon intoned. “I would like to say that I have no desire to kill you along with all the chaff beyond that door you guard, but that isn’t true. It would be a great feast, as I sll many delicious cores.” The creature stroked the feelers sprouting from its face like so kind of grueso beard. “This feeling of hesitance… what would you call it?”
Iridius was dumbfounded by the back and forth. “A conscience?”
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“No. I believe it is the understanding that slaughter will cost more than I would like to pay. I doubt the loson would suffer my presence if I were to trigger her ‘evil’ sense too strongly.” The c’thon’s feelers swayed. “Ah, if you are evil, then I can kill you without any issue. Tell , would you consider yourself evil?”
“What manner of question is that?” asked Iridius. “Of course not. I wield the Lady’s holy might. No malefactor could do as such.”
The c’thon paused to think. “I see. Were you aware that the one known as Zircon Malady was performing sacrificial blood rituals to summon Nha’thubo’s broodlings to your realm?”
“More outlandish accusations.”
“Your Stonelord has created impoverished encampnts where dissidents to his rule are exiled, likely at Nha’thubo’s command. After being interrogated, the dissidents are fed alive to insectoid creatures. The bugs took great joy in feeling the vibrations of their victim’s screams.”
“Absurd.”
“It may have been misplaced anger towards those who’d mutated and enslaved them, which would be your empire. The two-legs all looked the sa to them.”
“How could you possibly know any of that?”
“I am a c’thon. I tasted their thoughts. You truly did not know about what was happening above you?”
“My duties do not often take to the higher levels.”
“Hmm. Perhaps willful ignorance is evil.”
“That sounds dubious.”
“Brood King Nha’thubo’s tyranny has led to the death of many of my broodmates. You stand in the way of justice… Evil?”
“C’thons are a plague upon the world, and their deaths should be celebrated.”
Iridius’s blade flickered, and the champion’s eyes went wide.
“Oh, I think supporting genocide counts.”
“Enough with your gas, c’thon,” said Iridius, his blade flaring back to steady life. “You’ll not trick nor cause my faith to falter. You will either surrender now or die by my blade. Make your choice.”
The c’thon’s dark eyes studied Iridius’ weapon. It reached a hand behind its tentacles and drew out a greatsword as long as Iridius’ own and twice as thick. An aura of frost coiled around it, hissing as it fought against the heat of the essence-rich topaz.
“I was taught that honorable swordsn exchange nas before they duel.” The c’thon raised its sword and gave him a bow. “I am Shog’tuatha.”
The champion fought back another wave of bafflent. No c’thon wielded weapons. No c’thon bowed.
“Very well, Shog’tuatha. My na is Iridius, butthis isn’t a duel.”
“Are you certain?”
“Yes. You are invading my holand and threatening to kill my sovereign. It is a battle between mortal foes.”
The c’thon made a motion that seed to be a shrug. “Then there is no rule against using essence pressure.”
Iridius began to scoff at the idea of a c’thon comprehending such a thing, but choked on it when his knees threatened to buckle under the fierce weight that slamd down onto his shoulders.
“Wha–” he groaned, struggling to keep his sword raised.
“And it does not matter how many blades I use.”
The c’thon Shog’tuatha reached into its feelers again, drawing another massive sword, this one made of dark blue bone. Then the beast drew a pair of bardiches, one dripping with blood and the other burning with white-hot fla. Next, he pulled out a sabre and rapier. He pulled weapons from his tentacles one after the other like so kind of parlor trick, handing each off to a different tentacle. Shog’tuatha took a few practice swings, and Iridius’ eyes couldn’t even follow their arcs.
Finally, the monster was holding eight different weapons, one in each twisted humanoid hand and six in its feathered tentacles. Iridius blinked, and the c’thon had crossed the antechamber to loom over him.
Iridius gasped, fully comprehending his error.
The pressure rose, and the champion fell to his knees.
“Shit.”
*****
A pair of essence-washed and reinforced tungsten doors warped inward and flew off their hinges, smashing into the guards on either side. Shog was in the center of the throne room before they touched the ground.
A hundred n and won crowded the hall, their minds declaring themselves as mbers of the empire’s elite guard. A hive of the odd chiric insects Shog had encountered higher up crawled all over the walls and ceiling, filled with screaming bloodlust. Shog could taste Nha’thubo’s corruption on all of them.
The guards drew weapons with the speed of a languid dream, and the insects fell towards him with all the haste of drifting leaves.
Shog cut the air a hundred tis before the first guard’s sword had cleared its scabbard. The room thundered as sound and pressure beca Shog’s blade, scattering his hundreds of foes into pieces. Where the hair-thin waves bisected his enemies, bone and carapace split and shattered into a thousand razor shards, erupting from the flesh to slice through the victim’s nearby allies.
When the tungsten doors landed, they were joined by a rain of ten thousand cuts of at. All but two within the throne room were dead. Even the Stonelord had beco an unrecognizable pile of viscera upon his throne.
As the throne fell to pieces atop its Lord, Brood King Nha’thubo was revealed, a mass of rolling eyes, peering around the chamber. His slick limbs were ever waving through the air in search of thoughts to seize. He’d avoided the attack by phasing out of the material plane, but now he slowly faded back into existence. The Brood King’s ability to beco incorporeal at will was a trait that had been the death of many a c’thon.
“Shog’tuatha,” the Brood King’s voice slithered into his mind. “You dare intrude on–”
Shog wrapped Nha’thubo in his tentacles, having no interest in listening to the tyrant. Nha’thubo’s body beca epheral once more, but Shog had long ago learned how to wrestle with specters. His feelers held tight as Nha’thubo began to panic. The Brood King tried to savage Shog’s mind, but Shog had been granted sothing called a ‘cooldown’ by the System, one he’d taken for this very mont. For a few seconds, his mind beca unassailable even against the overwhelming potency of a Brood King specialized in flaying the wits from his victims.
Shog didn’t need an entire few seconds. He wrung the spectral Brood King in an instant, twisting the c’thon who’d tornted his brood for all of Shog’s existence into a glorified puddle.
Nha’thubo’s corpse retook its physical form in death, splattering to the ground, and Shog searched through the gore for the mana fiend’s core. He swept it up into his feelers, then swallowed it whole. Soon after, he felt the authority of a Brood King well up within him, and his business in this world’s first layer was done.
Shog looked around the throne room, tentacles stretching out to take the cores large enough to be worth eating. He scanned the limbs and weapons of the dead with a discerning eye, finding little worthy of his notice. The Stonelord had an ornantal arming sword that Shog initially dismissed, but soon noticed that an ancient power was buried beneath its gaudy tals and jewels. He tucked it away, believing one of his allies could uncover its secrets.
Shog turned and hovered back out to the antechamber, where Iridius lay clutching at his stump of a shoulder. Shog considered the man’s severed arm and the blade he’d wielded, but decided to leave them behind. They were too steeped in Holy energies for his liking.
The fallen champion looked up at him with a burning hatred, and Shog nodded back in approval. Losing a limb was a good way to build character, and Shog congratulated himself for showing such restraint while he hunted for Nha’thubo. Iridius seed to be an unforgivable idiot, but likely not ‘evil’.
Everyone and everything else he’d killed here had certainly been evil. Even those enslaved by Nha’thubo had to accept the power the c’thon offered, which mortals would surely believe to be wicked.
Shog considered that those types may have been evil-adjacent.
He was still trying to define the term. They were morally questionable, at the very least. That was probably good enough.
Shog stroked his beard, revisiting his cost-benefit analysis, trying to decide if putting so much thought into things like this was really worth it. He beseeched the Eye to take him back to the third layer of his howorld, and this dinsion’s Sam’lia granted him passage.
As reality began to transform into thought and dream, Shog continued to reflect on his actions, and he mused on how much work it took to be a hero.
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