The sun peered over the horizon, glinting off the misty fields that stretched from the town gates to the forest’s edge, but the dawn’s freezing air felt little different from the night’s. Grant blew warm, fogged breaths onto his shivering hands, pulling his coat tight. The clothing he’d received from the Airet staved off most of the cold, but although they gave him the largest size they could find, the sleeves only went halfway down his forearms.

  Now he knew how Dan felt when he tried to shop for clothes.

  “You do understand,” muttered Erlan, “you’re going to die, right?”

  Grant pulled in a breath through his teeth. “One day.”

  The Airet general had a point, of course. A pretty good one, if he was being honest. His idea was dangerous and stupid, two qualities which were probably the reason the mayor was so eager to let him try it. But Erlan didn’t know about Perfect Invisibility. At any time, Grant could just disappear, and the Cursed prisoners would never find him. “Not today. I’ve got a good feeling about this plan.”

  Erlan snorted. “How do your schemes usually go?”

  Grant let silence act as his answer. He had him there.

  “You know, the strangest thing happened last night when you fell from the wall,” Erlan said a few moments later. He looked up, searching for something on Grant’s face.

  Grant gazed toward the sun, shielding his eyes to hide his expression. He’d been wondering when Erlan would get around to bringing it up. “What was that?”

  The general paused. “You vanished. Before my very eyes. It was like you existed one moment, but not the next. I have seen creatures who seemed to meld into the shadows, but what you did was something else.”

  “I see.” He had left the white room with no intention of ever letting the knowledge of his Skill out. Even though he had come to trust and even like Erlan, Mind Mages existed. To the people of Evenon, he was nothing more than a recruit with 487 Points, and he would do everything in his power to keep it that way.

  “Well, daylight’s burning,” Grant said with a clap. “Maybe by the time I round back, I’ll have a better idea of what you’re talking about.” Without giving Erlan a chance to reply, he picked his pots up and sped off, protests following him.

  He clanged the pots overhead as he ran the length of the wall. The Cursed prisoners stopped lunging at the door and jerked their heads up, glassy eyes still blank, mouths still yawning wide open. “Come you bastards!” he shouted as loudly as he could. “Fresh meat, and pots to cook it in!” They broke away from the gates and shuffled along the side of the wall.

  He reached the corner of town, where he front-flipped off its ramparts and dashed away, still slamming the pots together like a toddler with cymbals. With Grant now on the ground, the Cursed doubled their efforts to keep up with him while he made sure to keep a cautious lead.

  The town gates were clear for now. Grant celebrated inwardly, as his entire plan hinged on being followed. He paused for a moment to allow them to catch up, waving a hand over his head. “Come on over! We don’t have all the time in the world!” They responded with grunts and gurgles.

  31 Agility had made him noticeably lighter on his feet, and he had to slow down several times to keep their interest. If he ran too far ahead, those at the back stopped where they were, shoulders slumped and arms slack at their sides.

  Grant fell into a rhythm as the Cursed lumbered along with hungry, dead eyes, and soon enough he felt giddy relief. He constantly had to remind himself that a twisted ankle could send him pitching forward on his face, and in seconds, the Cursed might be on him.

  The rock faces of cliffs loomed in the distance, although Grant wasn’t sure how far. The problem with things their size was they always looked deceptively close. Erlan had told him a healthy man could, with a severe lapse of judgment, reach their base from town in five hours of walking, so Grant assumed he could get to them in under two hours of running. Adjusting for breaks where he allowed the Cursed to regain ground, he figured the process would take about three.

  When the town was a distant speckle on the landscape, Grant stopped to rest his back against a tree. His legs were burning so badly he felt them starting to wobble, and his hair was matted to his forehead despite the cold. The Cursed squealed with excitement, picking up speed as they lumbered toward him.

  “I hope this works,” Grant muttered, then paused. “Probably because I have no other ideas if it doesn’t.”

  When they were close enough for him to see their whited-over irises, he turned Invisible. The Cursed stumbled over each other, some tripping up and falling to the ground. Those still standing stood in place. Their necks twisted in sudden jerks, as if they were unaware that they couldn’t turn them all the way around.

  “What will you do?” he asked them, nervously running a finger over his calluses. He slid behind a thick tree and canceled Perfect Invisibility, peeking out from behind its trunk.

  They entered a trance. The lightning-scar man was at the front, his feet planted in the soft dirt, his body swaying gently. The woman who once held a stiletto had seemingly lost it somewhere. She stood empty-handed, her mouth gaping. Grant had briefly worried they might begin running back toward the town, but instead, they ambled about directionless, jaws slack and eyes unfocused. The former prisoners still seemed as if they were not even aware of him, the town they had just abandoned, or even themselves.

  This was obviously not a permanent solution, but it was a vital step toward one. Grant’s Skill was perfectly suited for dragging them anywhere he wanted, but if he left them to their own devices, they would regain their senses and return to the town within days.

  He needed a way to keep them occupied longer.

  Hence his question to Mayor Bardum. He kept it simple and open to interpretation: “How do you feel about the Cult of Bay’kol?”

  “The Cult of Bay’kol?” he had shrieked, his face reddening and twisting with rage. That would have been answer enough, but what he said next was not simple, nor was it open to interpretation.

  Over the following twenty minutes, he delivered a red-faced sermon where he catalogued the atrocities of the Cult of Bay’kol in gruesome detail, pounding the table he stood before every several words. The townspeople listened and solemnly nodded along.

  Since Bay’kol had decided to settle in the region twelve years ago, the cultists had stolen the fruits Estreia’s people broke their bodies to grow and harvest, and before the recent construction of walls and gates, its people as well. Their Queen demanded regular human sacrifices for years, and the cultists were often hesitant to volunteer, despite never lacking in devotion.

  This tale has been unlawfully obtained from Royal Road. If you discover it on Amazon, kindly report it.

  They found a solution from the bodies in the nearby towns and settlements. Bay’kol was not particularly picky. The older residents of Estreia, who had lived there before the walls were raised, had seen the worst of the Cult and held the most resentment. It had been eight years since the last confirmed abduction, although some scouts and foragers had disappeared since.

  Words like “traitorous maniacs” and “irredeemable sycophants” came up multiple times.

  When he finished, Grant described his plan, the mayor’s grin broadened until Grant worried the man might tear a muscle. Erlan stood to the side, a disapproving look on his face, as if he were listening to the rantings of a madman. Nevara and Vaeri kept quiet, but their faces paled the more he explained.

  Grant would lead the Cursed to the Cult of Bay’kol’s doorstep. There, in a ravenous frenzy, they would attack the cultists. According to the townspeople, the cult was well-armed, well-trained, and empowered by their pact to Bay’kol. Even if they could not defeat the Cursed, Bay’kol’s offspring—wyrms the size of carriages—would descend from her throne to crush them.

  However the battle went, Estreia would win. In the meantime, the women and children would be evacuated, and another ship would be sent to transport the men to safety. Other than Erlan, Nevara, and Vaeri, every Airet present applauded his scheme, giving him encouraging words and pats on the back. They were particularly enthusiastic when he said his one condition for leading the Cursed away was passage on the second ship, and not a soul in the hall would deny him that.

  “Here we go,” Grant whispered. “Hey! I’m over here!”

  The Cursed twisted toward him, snarled, and surged forward, following like dogs on leashes. He jogged on, occasionally rounding back to pick up the slower members of their pack. With their eyes constantly fixed on him and where they last saw him, he didn’t even need to bang his pots together anymore. He reckoned they’d happily follow him off a mountain with nothing but jagged rocks at the bottom.

  Hours passed as he fell into a routine. He ran, herded them into a tighter group, and turned Invisible to rest his legs. The Cursed had been nothing short of admirable in their cooperation, but as Grant neared the face of the cliffs, unease sat heavily in his stomach. This was where everything became impossible to anticipate, the place where the most could go wrong in the shortest time.

  Holes gaped in the side of the rock wall, each separated by a hundred paces. In front of them stood cultists in thin black robes whose biggest concern seemed not to be the cold or any possibility of attack, but the boredom of standing watch. Grant closed in on the nearest one with his unwitting platoon at his flank. To the cultists, he wanted to appear to be one of them. He had shed his warm clothing and bid farewell to his pots to complete the image.

  He would find out in moments if it was working.

  With only a hundred yards of distance between the cultists and him, Grant exhaled with relief when they finally noticed him. They drew cudgels from their belt loops as they watched the force approach, but soon realized their opponents were too great a force to fight alone. They retreated inside and pulled down a vertical gate.

  Seconds later, the thunderous sound of a bell ringing shook the ground, and Grant activated Perfect Invisibility, then swooped away.

  The Cursed continued their mindless rush toward the caverns, attracted by the noise now. They crashed into it, dozens of bodies crushing the first to arrive. If he had gone Invisible too soon, they would have lost interest and wandered away. Too late, and he risked the cultists seeing he was not Cursed, and that this was a deliberate attack.

  He circled back, scaled the highest tree he could find, and deactivated the Skill. He pressed up against the frost-encrusted trunk and gritted his teeth as pressure settled in his chest.

  Come on! Everything had rested on his shoulders up to this point. Now it was out of his control, which grated on his nerves like a rusted saw on a slab of iron. He had done his part well, as had the Cursed. Everything was up to the cultists.

  The bells rang madly. It was cold, and every whistle of wind pressed him further into the tree. He stood on the branch, staring at every entrance to the fortress he could see, watching as the prisoners beat against and rattled the gates.

  Finally, black robes poured out from the other exits. The cultists marched, two abreast in neat lines, toward the Cursed who were trying to assault their sanctum.

  It was perfect. There were hundreds of them—men, women, old, young, short, tall, slim, and fat. They carried cudgels with blunt hammer-like heads with wicked spikes on the back side. Wooden shields of differing sizes and shapes. Wide nets, each corner weight held by another cultist.

  Grant’s throat tightened. Nets? Why do they have nets?

  A net made as much sense as a weapon as a dustpan. Were they used in a form of combat on this world?

  The cultists flanked the Cursed, whose attention was drawn to the noise of their maces on shields. In moments, they were surrounded on three sides, backs pressed against the cliffs. Grant turned away, squeezing his eyes shut. Cursed or not, 48 prisoners would die. He’d asked in the chapel what happened when the Tomb Fiend’s Curse took hold.

  There was no known cure. Perhaps a Spell on the Store could remove it, but when the Curse developed to its later stages, they would be slaves.

  Better dead than a slave, he figured, took a breath, and forced his eyes open. It was his massacre. Slaves, prisoners, Cursed, Evenonians or Campaigners, they were Humans first. He said a short prayer to the Goddess that their afterlives would treat them better than their first lives did.

  Four cultists cast a net over the lightning-scar Cursed as he lunged at another beating her shield. The Evenonian thrashed uselessly against it, which only tangled him up more. With practiced teamwork and coordination, they pulled him off his feet and began dragging him toward the opening. He kicked the air, scratched at his bindings, and spat and snarled, but he was powerless against them.

  Grant felt his eyelid twitching. They weren’t killing the Cursed. They were capturing them. In his hours of meticulously planning this ambush, his mind had given him images of any number of possible outcomes. In some, the Cult of Bay’kol massacred the Cursed. In others, the Cursed fought back for hours. In one, Bay’kol herself descended—which he admitted he would have loved to see, preferably from as far away as possible. In another, her whelps came in to finish the job.

  This was worse than all of them. It was worse than he’d ever thought to fear.

  They pulled the men and women in nets, one at a time, then hauled them into the tunnels. Why? Why would they keep them alive? Nobody had ever ventured into the cliffs and returned. Rescue missions for the kidnapped only provided the cult more bodies for their altars. Was that what they wanted? Sacrifices?

  His stomach heaved when he realized. The cult might want to interrogate them. They couldn’t speak now, but were they familiar with the Tomb Fiend’s Curse? He looked up at the colossal cliffs, at Bay’kol’s fortress.

  Grant’s eyes darted toward Estreia. Then, the cliffs. Estreia again, and then the cliffs again. He shook his head. Am I really doing this? He slid down the tree, twigs brushing against his cold ears, eyes wet and stinging from the freezing air, and sprang forward, rushing to the nearest entrance.

  To rush back and tell the townsfolk was what anyone with a shred of sense would do. In just two hours of hard running, he could break the news to them that it was a failure. Some would blame him, say he was a failure. But they could then take as many supplies as they could store to their shelters and try to wait until the next ship arrived. Perhaps it would be enough time.

  That did not change the fact that it was the wrong choice.

  In days, the Cursed would be able to talk again, and they might have much to say to the Cult of Bay’kol. If the truth about their attack on Bay’kol’s stronghold were to be revealed, the cultists would turn their attention on Estreia. Shelters or not, the town would stand no chance against hundreds of cultists reinforced by Cursed Campaigners with Goddess knows what Classes and Skills.

  And when Bay’kol herself learned of the planned attack on her doorstep, how would she react? The townsfolk said she had grown lazy after her earlier atrocities, but Grant could only imagine what penalty her wrath would earn the people of Estreia.

  He was already at the entrance of the cliffs. He checked his time left on Perfect Invisibility and winced.

  [5:47]

  He might only have a few days to prevent an attack. When the last Cursed was ushered into the dark, Grant squeezed in behind him, following the cultists into the corridors.

  With a heavy crash, the gate slammed behind him.