Chapter 81: Divine Punishment
Dawn's astral weapons opened fire.
The ballista launched crystalline bolts that punched through the nearest Horror's torso, but the wounds closed immediately, water and flesh knitting together in defiance of logic.
The creature that had been the lead Conductor now stood three meters tall, body a writhing fusion of human anatomy and liquid chaos.
"Persistent...", Dawn muttered, manifesting three more cannons. They fired in sequence, each blast forcing the Horror back a step.
But there were three of them now, circling her with predatory intelligence.
The woman Conductor had become something serpentine, her lower body a vortex of water and screaming mouths. The younger male was worse; his form flickered between solid and liquid, teleporting through puddles that appeared and vanished randomly.
Dawn's Cognito processed their movement patterns in real-time. She spun, manifesting a shield as the serpentine Horror lunged.
The impact sent shockwaves through the chamber, water splashing in all directions.
"Lea! Hurry up!", Dawn shouted, creating a rotating array of rifles that fired in all directions, keeping the Horrors at bay through sheer volume of force.
Lea wasn't bothering with subtlety anymore.
Her Cursed Constructs wrapped around the nearest pillar and pulled. The stones were regular construction material; they cracked and crumbled easily at the power of her thorns.
The victim, chained to it, fell forward, and Lea caught him with another tendril before he hit the ground.
Her Malediction Hexes spread like invisible poison, washing over all twenty-three semiconscious victims at once. Sleep. Deep, dreamless sleep that would protect them from the trauma of what was happening.
One pillar. Two. Three. Four.
Her enhanced cognition calculated the structural integrity of each pillar even as she destroyed them. Her Cursed Constructs worked like mechanical limbs now, smashing stone while carefully catching falling bodies. Within moments, all twenty-three victims lay unconscious on the chamber floor, freed from their restraints.
Behind her, one of Dawn's cannons exploded as a Horror smashed through it. The princess didn't even flinch, immediately manifesting two more to replace it.
Now came the harder part.
Lea knelt in the center of the unconscious victims, her shadow spreading across the floor like spilled ink. It touched all twenty-three of them simultaneously, creating connections between their sleeping minds and hers.
Then she activated Dream Eater.
Twenty-three consciousnesses flooded into her awareness at once. It was overwhelming, a cacophony of fear, confusion, trauma, and fragmented memories flowed into her. But Lea's Fourth Step had prepared her for this. Her mind, enhanced by her ascension, could process all of them simultaneously.
She dove into their collective unconscious, finding the threads of memory that held this nightmare. The kidnappings, the terror, the ritual preparations, the sound of the Conductors' chanting. The feeling of mystical restraints cutting into flesh.
And she consumed them all.
The process took maybe thirty seconds, though it felt longer. When Lea withdrew, gasping slightly from the effort, all twenty-three victims lay peacefully asleep, their unconscious minds now free of the horror they'd endured.
The flickering Horror chose that moment to appear beside her in a splash of water.
Lea didn't think. Her Cursed Constructs erupted like serpents, wrapping around its half-liquid form. Hastur drew from its sheath in her hand, and she drove the blade through its center mass.
The Horror shrieked that terrible Scream that made the sound-dampening walls resonate.
"Dawn!!", Lea shouted, "I'm done! Let me help!!"
"About damn time!!"
Lea became a shadow, flowing across the flooded floor to Dawn's position. Her Cursed Constructs joined the fight, black tendrils lashing out to entangle the serpentine Horror while Dawn's astral weapons concentrated fire on the lead creature.
The flickering Horror tried to reform near them. Lea's Silence Path unmade the sound of its approach, and her enhanced cognition predicted where it would appear. Her golden Judgement Sword manifested, pinning it to the wall before it could fully solidify.
"They're not dying!!", Dawn said, frustration bleeding into her voice. She created a massive hammer and brought it down on the lead Horror's skull. The impact created a crater in the floor, but the creature simply flowed around the weapon like water.
Ger Cursed Constructs wrapping around the serpentine creature, "They don't die easily. We need to—"
The God of Water's presence pulsed through the flooding chamber.
The three Horrors suddenly convulsed, their bodies rippling. Then they began to dissolve, melting into the water that surrounded them.
Not reforming this time, merely dissolving into puddles.
"The lesson was delivered.", that vast voice rumbled, "Let those who would claim our domain know the price of hubris."
The water drained away as impossibly as it had appeared, flowing back into non-existence. The three Horrors went with it, their screams fading into silence.
Then there was only Dawn, breathing hard, surrounded by fading astral weapons.
And Lea, standing among twenty-three unconscious victims who would wake with no memory of their nightmare.
"Is it over?", Dawn asked quietly.
"Yeah...", Lea replied after checking with her emotion radar, "The Conductors are gone, and the victims are safe and won't remember any of this."
Dawn looked at the destruction around them, broken pillars, shattered ritual components, and water stains on sound-dampening walls. Then she looked at Lea.
"All of them? At once?"
"Dream Eater works better when they're all already asleep...", Lea said, then added, "Fourth Step abilities."
Dawn shook her head slowly, something like awe mixing with concern in her expression, "You're getting scary, you know that?"
"Says the woman who just fought three Horrors alone.", Lea retorted, pulling her mask off to show a wry smile.
"Fair point.", Dawn dismissed her remaining weapons with a thought, "We should call IS7. Let them handle the official investigation and get these people home."
"Agreed."
As they walked away after sending the signal for the authorities, Dawn looked at her friend, the Avengee who'd spent weeks hunting criminals alone, who'd just erased trauma from twenty-three minds simultaneously.
"No more secrets, Lea.", Dawn said quietly, "If you're doing something this dangerous, I want to know about it. That's an order from your princess and a request from your friend."
Lea met her eyes and nodded.
"No more secrets."
Though even as she said it, Lea knew that some secrets weren't hers to share. But for now, walking away from the ruins of a failed ritual with her friend beside her, and twenty-three lives saved...
For now, the promise was enough.
=0=0=
A few weeks had passed.
The expedition team traveled a different route, slightly more dangerous with its abundance of deadly wildlife. Not a problem for the Saintess who mowed down everything, or the insane devotees known as the higher-ups of the Church of Sacrifice.
Jim had proven useful, his Trailblazer powers allowing him to predict safe passages and avoid the Tome of Light's most frequent manifestation points. Eric worked alongside him surprisingly well, making the Saintess a bit suspicious, but she let it slide.
The Tome still appeared occasionally, but Jim's routes minimized casualties; it had only appeared three times in a few weeks.
Each time, the Saintess launched herself at supersonic speeds toward the floating book.
Each time, she missed by millimeters.
Each time, her fury shook the earth.
The land grew stranger as they traveled deeper. Trees with bark like flesh, rivers that ran red even without blood, the air itself felt watched.
Then, one morning, they smelled it. An overwhelmingly thick scent of blood in the air... not decay, not death, but something living. The scent of vitality was so concentrated that it became oppressive, making even the hardened expedition members hesitate.
"The Land of Crimson Tree...", Eric breathed, his eyes wide with religious fervor, "Divine Kingdom of the Goddess..."
The Saintess reached into her pack and pulled out a small reliquary. Inside, nestled in velvet, sat the Crown of Thorn, twisted branches interwoven with what looked like petrified suffering.
"Finally...", she whispered, her golden eyes gleaming with anticipation, "Lady Pain's child shall be welcomed into this world."
Jim stared ahead at the crimson forest that awaited them, where a god's child would be born through the union of artifact and sacred ground.
The prophesied savior of the world.
He just hoped he'd survive long enough to see it.