I wasn’t exactly the best public speaker. Not talking to crowds went hand in hand with not going to parties or not trying debates or any other sort of public-facing endeavour that needed to assert my dominance over my social anxiety.
But not this ti. My heart raced, my skin felt clammy, my breaths ca faster. There was actual adrenaline flowing through my veins.
Wild. Incredible. I had been in a literal deadly fight barely an hour ago, and my body was acting as if I was back in another life-or-death situation. Like a crowd looking up at with hope in their eyes, their open expressions just waiting to be filled with belief, was as bad as a bloodthirsty Thrall hungering for my flesh.
I could do this. If I had faced down and beaten a Scarthrall, I could face down any old crowd too, no matter how my stupid body reacted.
“I—I did.” Faltering wasn’t going to help sell the tale. I took a breath, focused on the one thing I needed to do here. Tell the truth. “I killed one of the Scarthralls that threatened us.”
The mood shifted instantly. My few words didn’t magically make the fear, doubts, and uncertainties just disappear. It wasn’t so simple.
But the chilling needles poking into my back signified the way everyone’s regard grew just that tiny bit fierier. The conviction in my voice sold the truth. I had killed a Scarthrall, and I would do so again if the need arose. I believed it. So did the Elder, and now, all these people who had co to the cult believed it too.
Better yet, they saw a path to believing in themselves as well.
The power to do that—to not only affect my faith in my own potential, but to inspire others to do the sa as well—felt almost like a drug. The chilling sensations in my spine turned to rigid rods of energy pulsing through my whole body. I couldn’t leave them hanging. I was starting to understand how Escinca felt.
And through it all, the doubt still surfaced.
“It ain’t the sa,” soone in the crowd said, shaking his shaggy head. “You—you’re a cultist. One of them with real Paths. We… we got nothing like tha’.”
It was true. They didn’t possess the powers I did. They certainly didn’t have a core that devoured mana and empowered Sacrifice. A lot of them had no Paths or Aspects whatsoever.
But I was in no mood to feel pathetic.
“Yeah, most of you don’t have Paths,” I said. “So what? It doesn’t an you keel over and die. That doesn’t an you give up on your friends and families. That doesn’t an you stop fighting for what’s right.”
I took a pause to breathe. This wasn’t a practiced speech. None of it was paced so I could keep going, so I could keep tugging at just the right heartstrings to achieve maximum effect.
But they resonated all the sa. It had to. I was fighting for myself above all. No point in lying to myself about it. That said, in the midst of trying to figure out Sacrifice and delay the impending doom presented by my mana implosion, in the welco that I had received from the cult, in seeing the things that they stood for…
I had co from a ho where society felt like it kept failing. Where achieving aningful things just kept growing harder. Where objective proof of improvent from the past didn’t negate the fact that I was one terrible injury away from bankruptcy, one bad week away from being holess, one wrong move away from almost wanting to give up on life.
There had been no room for complacency, no room for mistakes, no room even for misfortune.
Seeing the sa kind of oppression—far worse, in all honesty, with how outright and blatant it was—had only been familiar at first. At least I had magic here. So twist of luck had granted the ability to change my life with my own two hands.
Looking back on it, I had almost been satisfied with that. Almost. Right up until the Thralls had been so deranged, so barbaric, so thoughtlessly dehumanizing.
“We can fight back,” Escinca said. I had never heard him sound so determined, so totally sure. “And we will. Together. There is strength in numbers, power in foresight, a great might that arises from care and thought.”
I nodded along. “Rember, the Thralls didn’t just attack us directly. They were caught. They were desperate and forced to go on the offensive, and even when they did so, they only took the most vulnerable among us and tried to run, cowards that they are.”
It bore repeating that the Thralls were vampires. They couldn’t break down anyone’s door and invade anybody’s ho. Many though there seed to be of them, we had thinned their numbers and they were still—had to be—vastly outnumbered by the sum total of people living in Ring Four. Strong though they were, they were far from unkillable. Stakes through the heart, sunlight even if it was artificial, Blessings that Escinca could offer.
The more we talked, the surer everybody looked. Even those who were scared, those who doubted, were exchanging encouraging glances with their closest fellows. It was slightly surprising, but even the kids from the orphanage were looking less fearful and more determined.
I was even more taken aback when I spotted Gutran nodding resolutely, as well as Receptionist Silhatsa clapping.
Forget them, the other cults were nodding approvingly too. The old man from the Wind Cult and the younger leader of the Sea Cult both looked on approvingly. It was nice to see not every other cult was treating us like competition that needed to be weeded out.
“The Thralls will not be the end of us,” Escinca said. “We will not go down so easily.”
They cheered at that. It sent that strange thrill down my spine again.
Afterwards, the party was interrupted but it wasn’t over. We weren’t in a celebratory mood, of course, but that didn’t an we couldn’t dole out what remained of the food and drink for people to take ho with them. The people who needed them, that was. When one of the guards tried to take a breadstick, Aurier scowled mightily enough that he shrank back.
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Still, the guards were prepared to help. Revayne was true to her word. So more of them had showed up, and they were all going to accompany people back to their hos. There would be more patrols and whatnot too. It was a good start.
We also provided so practical solutions. Everyone was tasked with getting stakes if they could, as well as being advised to never go anywhere alone. A lot of people already had little holy talismans and fetishes that they believed would help ward off the vampires. I wasn’t sure how true that was. Honestly, even the stake idea was faulty since the Thralls could just shift their hearts, but at least I was able to warn them about that.
Escinca also promised to perform so Blessings on them. I learned that it was a specific Aspect he possessed, one that could imbue different properties upon individuals and objects. These properties could even be integrated with other Aspects, such as his Aspect of Light.
In other words, he could quite literally Bless others to be fatally repellent to vampires.
There were limitations, of course, with regards to things like area of effect and ti and all that. Gold-ranked though the Aspect might be, it still had constraints the Elder would need to work with.
I wasn’t privy to all the details and there really wasn’t any ti to explain all the intricacies to , but I trusted Elder Escinca was taking the optimal decisions.
Gutran praised the cult for the way we handled the matter, going so far as to ntion that his war god, Ulk, would have approved of it too. He was positive about that.
“And thank you,” he told , gruffly but with gratitude. “For squeezing a recomndation into your little speech.”
I just smiled. “I told you I could help with your business, didn’t I?”
He slowly smiled back. “The deal stands.”
Silhatsa praised before she left too, disbelieving that I of all people had managed to kill a Thrall. “Maybe that Gold-rank assessnt wasn’t incorrect after all.” The look in her eyes was both cunning and faraway at the sa ti, sohow. “The Guildmaster will be interested to hear about this as well.”
Even the Rakshasa Ration House proprietor ca to us before leaving. “I will see what I can do… through the rations, that is.”
“It is appreciated,” Escinca replied.
All that was left, as the last of the people departed, was dealing with the rest of the cults.
“Great speech,” problem girl from Earth Cult said. She and her companions had returned in the middle of said speech, and they definitely weren’t impressed. They appeared bloodied and battered, but not truly hard. Just people who had been busy killing. “While you were here promising lies, we were out there killing more of the vampire bastards.”
“Promising lies?” I had a hard ti not yelling at them.
“Of course. We caught the tail end of your little self fellatio. Making everyone think they’ve got a chance against these monsters. You’re leading them to their deaths with all your stupid false hope.”
“It’s not stupid and it’s definitely not false.”
I didn’t get to find a proper counterargunt to their bullshit, because Escinca approached afterwards and spoke with the older Earth Cult lady. The other cult leaders had co together as well. For better or worse, none of them were interested in bickering. At least, not so overtly.
“We will pass on the warnings to our people and our neighbourhood,” the Wind Cult leader said with a light wheeze. His sharp eyes scrutinized Escinca. “We will also warn them about the Sun Cult’s promises.”
Escinca sighed. “I will offer my assistance where I can, but it may take so ti.”
“Of course it will,” the Earth Cult leader said, a little scathingly. “If only we could be like those nobles and pay you off, you could be incentivized to be faster.”
The younger Sea Cult leader raised his hands. “Now, now, give the poor fellow a break. I’m sure those old bones can only go so fast.” He flashed his sowhat calculating smile at everyone. “We can all aid with Blessing, though the Sea Cult will perhaps be the most useful apart from the Sun Cult itself. The earth might be everywhere, but water is far more versatile.”
Well, I could at least appreciate the fact that he was treating everyone the sa rather than ganging up on Escinca.
“Blessings and protections are all well and good,” the older woman said. I couldn’t tell what was more severe, her expression or her bun. “But the Earth Cult will not remain so passive. Regardless of what the guards or any of you decide to do, we at the Earth Cult will not rest until the Thralls are eradicated from our neighbourhood. We will conduct a pogrom until this plague is vanquished.”
The Sea Cult leader whistled. “That is quite the bold move. Did the Earth Cult get infiltrated by the followers of Ulk? Again?”
I could tell the old woman was one step away from slapping her younger counterpart.
Thankfully, the guard captain stepped in. Revayne had been listening in on them all the while. Even in an impromptu eting like that, she was reading her book more than she was talking with any of them. “You are free to do as you wish, of course. But take care not to tread on our endeavours, in the sa way we will respect your efforts.”
“Are you threatening us, guard?” problem girl asked. “You, the person who let it get this bad in the first place? You think you’ve got the right to tell us how to clean up your ss?”
That was being both harsh and rude. I agreed that Revayne could have been faster about it, but how were the guards even supposed to have predicted that there would be that many Thralls infiltrating the party?
Their presence had actually been helpful. Hell, they had been the ones to rescue that orphanage girl.
Credit to Revayne, she didn’t even bother biting back. “We have one of them in our custody. I’m not sure of the date yet, but we will make use of the opportunity this presents to get to the bottom of this mystery. You all are invited to attend, of course, though not literally. Don’t bring your entire cults. I will notify you about the date of the interrogation.”
That developnt, which I already knew about, surprised most of the other cultists. Even problem girl from the Earth Cult was both impressed and shocked. Clearly, their efforts had led to the death of any Scarthralls they had co across, but the guards had succeeded where they hadn’t.
We adjourned ourselves for the ti being. Things were ssy, complicated, and despite our success—no one had been killed, minus several of the Thralls—there was still the possibility that things could go horribly wrong. We simply didn’t know enough yet.
But there was also the possibility of that lack of information changing soon, and with that hope held aloft, we parted.
Well, they parted. I was already ho.
We busied ourselves in little tasks for the rest of the day. Aurier and I made sure the temple was clean and tidy after all the hullabaloo and we made sure to really scrub the spot where Hamsik had killed that Scarthrall. Speaking of whom, the half-vampire remained missing and definitely didn’t show up to help.
Annoying as that was, Escinca didn’t seem to mind. He just went on sanctifying the entire temple again with the help of Blessing. It took a while, and I was tired by the end. The temple wasn’t small and I had maintained a constant use of Gravity throughout the process, just to keep practicing, to keep ranking up.
By the ti I went to bed, all the events and adrenaline of the day had really left exhausted.
I bid goodnight to Enrico. “Thanks for leading Hamsik to the Thrall in ti.”
The sprite flashed gold briefly before dimming to let sleep.
I wasn’t surprised at all when the fight ca back in my dreams. When the blood, the torn limbs, the wounds and scars, the way I had ripped the Thrall apart, all replayed in my mind, over and over. Horrifying, yes, but not surprising in the least.
When I woke up, I felt sick. Good thing I didn’t really need to eat when I could just Sacrifice breakfast again.
First thing I did, though, was tell Escinca that I had acquired a new Affix for Sacrifice. When I told him it was Emulation, his eyes widened before he smiled. A smile that promised I'd be learning more about my new Affix.
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