Level One God

Lord Ashmore waited silently as we watched the constructs drag corpse after corpse into the center of the keep's courtyard. For some reason, a small viewing portal showing a group of grommets was hovering near the pile of bodies.

Odd.

Grommets weren't particularly morbid creatures, and the viewing portals had largely steered clear of us once the game managers caught wind of our grisly deeds.

"Eliminated?" Lord Ashmore asked me, voice pitched low and curious. "You're certain?"

"Yes, Lord," I said, keeping my eyes down.

"Hmm. Disappointing. I'd thought Asha and Morgave would prove more useful. I suppose that leaves me with… you."

"Yes, Lord," I said, eyes still downcast. In front of us, rotting corpses of various beasts from the tournament grounds and fallen contestants shambled in and out of the keep, feet dragging in the dirt. Bone rattled against bone and the endless sound of limp flesh piling upon limp flesh filled the night.

Lord Ashmore was a frighteningly tall man. Nearly seven feet and broad across. I knew the rumors, of course. It was why I'd been sent to investigate him nearly a century ago. To this day, I still didn't know if he had guessed why I'd come to offer myself as his apprentice—if this endless torment of servitude was a punishment or if he thought he was granting me a gift.

"How were they eliminated?" Lord Ashmore asked. He was kneeling and swiftly opening the ribcage of a fallen participant. An aspirant, based on the gray uniform.

As always, I took a few seconds to choose my words carefully. Misspeaking around the Lord of Bone could be worse than fatal. "I believe they were in the territory of the mongrel army when last seen, Lord."

Lord Ashmore had a deceptively calm way about him. A casual observer might even mistake him for kind and aloof. I knew better, of course. Gods did I know better.

Bone cracked as he easily ripped the body open and extracted the heart. A shape moved out of the shadows in the corner of the keep, then. A large, hulking shape.

It was his prized pet. He always had one. A monstrosity of stitched together corpses bound by a tortured soul. He was always striving to make the thing larger, sewing on corpse after corpse until the tortured soul at its core finally gave out from the magical strain.

The abomination lumbered closer, footsteps shaking the ground as it waited. Lord Ashmore offered the heart to the beast, who ate it gladly before returning to the shadows.

"The mongrel army," he mused. "I see. Well, it appears they aren't long for this tournament. I see their leader among the corpses. Just there." He pointed a long and crooked finger toward a body I hadn't noticed.

It was completely covered in blood and the clothing was stained so deeply I couldn't even see if it had been a noble, aspirant, or slave. But I did recognize the horned helmet. It belonged to the leader of the mongrel army.

"Ah, quite good, Lord," I said, nodding my head. "Would you like me to lead a contingent of constructs to attack now that their leader is dead?"

Lord Ashmore waved the suggestion away. "All I want is for you to keep bringing me corpses. You do realize how difficult it is to get access to this many corpses without raising eyebrows on the outside, do you not?"

"Of course, Lord," I said, bowing my head.

We continued through most of the night. I could still remember what it felt like to use normal magic. Not this twisted, inky stuff that seeped from the class corestone Lord Ashmore had given me so long ago. But the memory felt like a dream, now. So distant I couldn't always be sure it ever really happened.

I had been a Soul Class user. My specialty was summoning magic, which was why The Order had selected me to infiltrate Lord Ashmore's manor and learn more. I had certainly learned. Horrible things. Unspeakable things.

I learned how Lord Ashmore discovered a way to harness the power of a Forsaken while holding the madness at bay. He fed the madness into his creations. It was genius, of course, but diabolical in its cost. The arrangement required death. Staggering amounts of death.

He had dark contacts all over Eros to bring us the victims. And his appetite was insatiable. He took far more than he needed to keep us sane. He kept them for experiments and for playthings.

I used half my focus to keep the web-like strands of tacky tainted mana extended outward, puppeting each construct under my control with a collective command to gather. There was an art to it, and when I could forget the cost of our work and class, I occasionally found joy in the mastery required to command so many.

Tonight, though, my thoughts were on the past. On the way none of us who followed him were really that far removed from these shambling beasts bound by a thread of mana. No, Ashmore didn't command us with mana, but he held us in his palm all the same.

And where would I go? Without his contacts bringing victims to feed our corruption into, I would lose myself to Forsaken magic in mere weeks. And even if I tried to pry the corrupted corestone from my center, the taint would linger.

My lip curled at the thoughts. If anyone even suspected what we did to maintain our magic, they would hunt us down and make us pay in blood. But he's a careful man, and he knows how to press the knife's edge of fear where it's most effective.

I directed a pair of constructs to lower the main gate and released the threads of magic for the night. Lord Ashmore was working on another body, prying organs free and feeding them to his construct. When he finished, he stood, not bothering to wipe the blood staining him up to the forearms.

Without a word, he drifted in through the huge double doors leading to the inner keep, his abomination moving quietly behind him.

When he was gone, I sighed with relief and sat down. I kept command over half a dozen constructs who patrolled outside the keep but released the rest. Our mana worked differently than normal kinds. Instead of meditation to recover, our class corestones filled up from death and pain. Even our own pain and blood could fuel them in an emergency.

If you stumble upon this tale on Amazon, it's taken without the author's consent. Report it.

Something moved in the pile of bodies.

I mentally checked my threads of mana, thinking I had somehow mistakenly animated a corpse. It wouldn't be the first time, of course.

But no… the only threads I maintained all extended outside the walls.

With a sigh, I stood, drawing a curved dagger. The constructs did occasionally mistake the living for the dead. I took no joy in—

I slammed face-first into a wall of blue magic, nose crunching in an explosion of pain. The wall of blue felt as though it pushed back against me far harder than my slow speed could account for.

I staggered backward, clutching my face and nearly stabbing my own eye in my confusion. I backed into something short and solid just below my knees. It, too, pushed hard against me, knocking my legs out from under me. I crashed against the dirt, the impact knocking the air from my lungs with a quiet oof sound.

And then a man was straddling me. He held a small knife to my neck, and I could barely see the impression of his features through the slits in his horned helmet.

"Not a word," he breathed.

He was big. Strong, and fast. Gods he was fast.

I gave a slight nod of my head, not wanting to cut myself on the edge of his blade.

"I have a few questions, and then I'm going to eliminate you. Understand?"

My eyes widened. Lord Ashmore would hold me accountable if this happened. Elimination from the tourney was inconsequential, but what would happen after… I knew the horrors he would inflict on all of us for failure back at the manor. Years of punishment if it pleased him.

"P-please. He'll torture me."

The man in the helmet tilted his head slightly. "The guy with the bone armor?"

"Y-yes."

"Tell me why I should care."

The question landed on me with surprising weight. Why should he care? Maybe once I was someone admirable. Someone with intentions to do the right thing. But what had I become? A coward. A monster. A beast too fearful of losing his mind to break free from the manor. Too cowardly to take my own life as some of the braver ones had in the beginning.

I closed my eyes. "Do what you must."

A few beats passed before he spoke again. "You're a noble. I need to know what you know about the tournament. I know they told all of you more than they told us. And I know you used to work with the game managers in another city, so don't even pretend you didn't."

"What?" I breathed. That hadn't been the kind of question I expected him to ask. But I supposed the longer I talked, the more chance there was of Lord Ashmore coming back to the courtyard. If he found this man here, I knew he would add him to the abomination as punishment. I shouldn't feel sorrow at the thought, especially considering this man was threatening me. But—

"What happens if people try to leave the boundaries of the tournament area?" he asked.

I shook my head. "They would be hunted down. Exterminated."

"And what if they didn't see?"

"They see everything."

"Even when the viewing portals aren't around?" he asked.

"Even when," I said. I didn't know how he could possibly know, but he was correct. In my former life, I'd served a few years in my home city helping to oversee the game managers. I knew some of the magic they used, including tools like The Master's Eye. "They can see anything within the bounds of this area. They'll have primed it before the game began."

"Game," he said, the word sounding loaded with bitterness and spite. "How do we blind them? Is there a way?"

The dagger's edge pressed harder against my neck and I felt warm wetness began to spread from the spot. "No. There's no…" I hesitated.

He leaned even harder, the dagger pressing deeper into my neck. "How."

But there was a way. I'd just never thought of it as blinding the game managers. "The beast," I said, words rushing out of me. "It's a contingency plan. Most tournaments bring one in. Something deadly enough to wipe out all remaining contestants. But part of the process is turning off all access to view the tourney. The game managers would lose their sight when they turn off the viewing portals. They'd be blind until the beast was done with its work."

He finally eased up, sitting upright, dagger still held near my neck but no longer digging into my skin. "The beast? How do I make them release it?"

"What?" I breathed, laughing slightly. "This is a Wood and Iron tourney. The beast would be… at least Gold Rank. Likely close to level 50. Even if everyone worked together, there would be no way to bring it down."

"That's not what I asked you."

My mouth worked silently. Was he mad? "The beast would be released if the tournament was undermined in some catastrophic way. Some sort of turn of events they couldn't risk letting the public see."

"Like an aspirant and slaves on the verge of winning?"

My eyes widened again. Did he really think… "Y-yes. That would qualify."

He frowned, nodding slightly. "Okay. Understood. Now I'm going to test something on you. I'm pretty sure it won't hurt."

"What?" I asked. While he'd been threatening me, I was quietly extending threads of mana in every direction, animating corpses that were rising to their feet and moving quietly toward him.

"And I can feel what you're doing. Stop it." The man in the helmet lashed out suddenly, backhanding me across the face so hard I twisted sideways and tasted blood. The shock of pain was nothing new to me, but it was enough to weaken my threads.

Behind him, I saw my constructs stumble and slow.

He uncorked a glass bottle full of a black liquid that bubbled like tar. "Sorry if this does hurt. I wasn't able to ask the monsters I tested it on, but they looked calm enough."

Before I could even process what he was talking about, he extended a palm toward me and black liquid sprouted from thin air, dousing me.

I tried to crawl backward, but my movements were sluggish and strange. It was cold, and I could feel the icy influence spreading as the black fluid clung to my body. It began to harden, restricting my movement until only my head was free to move.

And then I was stuck. Frozen so completely I couldn't even lift a finger. But my threads… they were not frozen, so I kept extending mana outward, urging the constructs to creep closer.

"What have you done?" I asked, hoping to keep him distracted.

He looked over his shoulder at the dozens of bodies coming toward him and sighed. "Sorry, man. I wish you hadn't tried that. Because this part is going to hurt."

"What do—"

He began cutting. Hacking. His dagger rose and fell as he stabbed my thigh again and again and again. But I watched in shocked disbelief as the wound healed itself each time.

The wet punch of his dagger, then the explosion of pain so bright and terrible it made white flash in my eyes. And then the pain retreated almost instantly, leaving only a confusing phantom of agony in its place.

And…

I gasped in surprise as I realized my own mana stores were draining at an unbelievable pace. It was as if my own mana was being used to heal my wounds, and even with the dark pact of pain trying to refill my mana as my own pain fed my core, it wasn't enough.

Within mere seconds, I was nearly empty. He paused, dagger gripped in his hand as he seemed to be thinking about something. "One more should do it," he said, then stabbed his weapon once more into my thigh.

I screamed in pain, but felt the very last shreds of my mana drain toward the wound, healing it almost fully but not completely.

My mana threads frayed and fell away, the corpses all around tipping sideways and falling motionless to the ground.

I was empty of mana. Completely drained. What the hell had he done?

The man in the helmet pumped his fist as if he was excited about something. "Fucking finally," he whispered to himself. "Evolution time…"

"What in the gods—"

"Sorry for all the stabbing," he said, sounding almost normal for a moment. "But you know you deserved it. You were trying to use your zombies on me."

Zombies?

The door burst open and Lord Ashmore stood at the opening. In the high doorway I could see the darkened shape of his abomination looming just behind him.

"What is the meaning of this? What have you done to my underling?"

"Hold on, bone guy. I'm trying to pick which skill evolution I want." The man in the helmet said.

And then shadow magic began to flock to Lord Ashmore, dark as night and quiet as death.

"Dammit," the leader of the mongrel army said, standing and summoning a polearm to one hand. "You couldn't just wait a minute?"