Re:Cursed

In the smouldering remnants of the Dark Star, Solan seethed.

She'd had to call in many favours, and now it was for nothing. Despite her preparations, it had been impossible to unravel her grand Fleshforge from the corruptive tendrils of the core. It had taken ten thousand lives and the better part of a century for her to create that hammer; mere weeks, and it was gone.

And now, as her chains ripped through the lingering labyrinth of steel, Solan discovered there weren't any survivors.

Her cultists had survived years within the disaster's grasp, but it was the final few days that did them in? Solan didn't believe it. Not for an instant. Whether it was a move from the other cults, or a ploy by her own — she narrowed her eyes at the man besides her — the survivors had been sabotaged.

"Z͐a̟͠n̖͐di̥s͈t̝̾h̃̔́." She snapped, and the man stepped forward. Not an ounce of hesitation.

"At once, S͍̾ølą̛́̄n̼̙͈̘̄̍̓͘," he chirped and raised his arms with excessive flair.

Solan suppressed her snarl of displeasure as glowing blue trails of light spun out from his hands. Zandisth had carved his path far from the core discipline she'd formed the cult with. That alone wouldn't bother her, but he was encroaching into the core ideology that formed her Fleshsmiths' base. With his rapid expansion of influence amongst the younger cultists, she wanted nothing more than to snuff out his greedy aspirations. Solan imagined wrapping her chains around him and squeezing until he was nothing more than paste to use in her next creation. As she had done with countless ambitious cultists that believed they could replace her.

But he had proven too useful. She couldn't kill him.

All her cultists should strive to be more like K'Noirus: dedicated, intelligent, and beyond anything else, loyal. Both towards the cult, and Solan. The woman had been her right hand for the better part of two centuries now, and as long as she continued as was, she would continue to be so for many more.

Zandisth's blue strands of light raced inwards, and in mere moments they had an army of barely perceivable souls standing before them.

Solan stepped forward. Alone, she commanded the attention of all, even souls no longer linked to their plane of existence. "What killed you?" she demanded from the three eighth-creeds that had no reason to be felled.

For a few moments, the souls seemed to struggle to focus. It was like they hadn't heard her. Unbound souls were a fleeting existence; their delayed answers weren't unexpected. It took them time to gather memories now that they didn't have the brains to do so for them.

What Solan didn't expect, was for them to burst out laughing.

It started with just the three, but rapidly spread through the hundreds of former Fleshsmiths. Some giggled. Some snickered. Others let out loud, echoing, raucous bellows. Solan stilled as a choir of dead laughed at her.

"Z͐a̟͠n̖͐di̥s͈t̝̾h̃̔́," she said in an even tone.

"Y-yes?" The usually so self-assured man suddenly stared at her, clearly unnerved.

"What is this?" Solan never snapped her eyes away from the souls who's very forms were pulling apart under the strain of their unmitigated euphoria.

This story has been stolen from Royal Road. If you read it on Amazon, please report it

This was not natural. Souls rarely felt anything at all. Only emotions and sensations of immense intensity lingered with the soul itself, but in such cases, the soul was sacrificed in the manifestation of something else. These souls remained whole, yet laughed as if they held their minds. It meant something had twisted their souls. For it to have happened so quickly, and to so many, that something could only be-

"A god," Zandisth breathed. "Why… how did a god manifest."

Solan could no longer suppress her snarl. Her chain snapped forth, and despite the lack of physical forms, she obliterated half the souls from existence. Zandisth gave a pained expression, but didn't complain.

The news just kept getting worse. Not only did all the cults now think they'd been the cause of the Dark Star Events, they'd lost a significant portion of power in the form of the Forge and a hundred thousand members, but they now had to deal with the summoning of a god in their territory. A summoning they hadn't even benefited from.

Did someone form a contract, or had the god brought itself upon them. Which was worse? If it was a contract, it meant someone had the means and willingness to set a god upon them. She only knew a handful besides herself that could… and none of them would bring a being like that down on Coral to kill a few hundred cultists. They would do it themselves.

If a god could pierce Coral's protections, in addition to the naturally low level of corruption, then that god was an Eidolon. If they had caught the attention of an Eidolon… then they had a lot more problems than some deaths and a lost Fleshforge.

As the last laughing souls giggled away their existence, the three Fleshsmiths' attention fell on the five remaining dead. Not all had been felled by the god.

"How did you die?" Zandisth asked for her.

Two of the cultists responded that they'd been swallowed by whales. A disappointing answer, but the third and fourth gave rather interesting answers.

"My spine was severed by my acolyte." Solan had to roll her eyes at that. Of course there would be power-plays in the moments before the Dark Star collapsed.

"A young girl cut off my head."

"A young girl?" Solan repeated.

"Barely beyond her first naming." The soul clarified.

Solan tilted her head back to her loyal underling. "What creed was this one?"

"Fourth, I believe. Fifth evolution. She was K'thorn's support."

"So a kid at their second evolution — at most — killed a fourth creed harbinger?" Solan was surprised. "Who is this new acolyte? If she somehow managed to survive, she sounds like perfect fast-track material."

"She was not a Fleshsmith. She was an outsider." Despite the soul's natural unenthusiastic tone, Solan noticed an ever so slight warble. The ever so slight indication of strong emotion.

Solan narrowed her eyes. What was a young member of another cult doing in the Dark Star? Were they the saboteur? But what cult would send a child with any expectation of success? What child could summon a god?

"Tell me everything about her."

"She was one of cursed mutations, except stable. She remained sane, despite growing wings and claws and an eye in her chest." The soul continued to spout off many useless details about the girl, but Solan was already lost in her own thoughts.

Children with bundles of curses that manifested in physical mutations weren't terribly uncommon. Solan had sacrificed a few dozen over the centuries. But more than one mutation? And remaining sane? That was unheard of even for her. It was hard to believe without seeing herself.

But… if it turned out to be true, if the girl had actually summoned a god at a low evolution, then this wasn't something she could ignore. This was an opportunity that would make up for the immense losses her cult had accumulated. And not only make up for them; it would spear them leagues above the so-called pinnacle cults.

A fabled perfect sacrifice.

"Shall I search for her, Ma'am?" her right hand stepped forward quietly.

Reliable as ever. "Yes. But K'No͔͌͒̇ǐ̜͆r̢̥u̝s͕, keep it quiet."

The woman nodded, and slipped away.

Solan let out a sigh. Her cult was in the worst state it had been in nearly three centuries, but if this was revealed true, then their current state was nothing but a hurdle before their eventual supremacy.

"So… I'll take it you don't want these five?" Zandisth's voice snapped her from her ambitions.

She glared at him out of the corner of her eye, before turning and walking away, chains of flesh and steel forming stairs for her. Solan ignored the man's collection of their cultists' souls. There was a lot she had to rebuild, and now was not the time to contest his twisted use of her members' souls. Holding them back from passing on was wrong.

After all, Fleshsmiths were her god's rightful nutrition.