Six Souls [Isekai/LitRPG] [B1&2 complete, B3 in progress]

"You summoned us, lord?" Panash said as the Beatuties were led into a command tent. "I must say the new guards are a little much. Don't you think? Twenty nomads and a dozen giants to guard lovers, not fighters, seems unnecessarily repressive." He was immaculately dressed, as were the rest of them, despite having been rousted from their tents before the sun had even risen.

"You will leave us today, but I have a gift for your master." I kept my voice low and flat.

"You are willing to send a detachment of your forces to assist him?" asked Shu brightly. "This is excellent news!"

"I wish to return something that belongs to him. I didn't know I had it, so I must extend my deepest apologies."

"You may send it with your troops. I'm sure the Lord of Roses will appreciate such a gesture. But what is it?" Panash asked, suddenly suspicious.

"I used to be very good at acting. I could slip in and out of places without raising an eyebrow. I think my time with the tribes has cost me some of that skill," I muttered.

"Better to be direct," added Jagapan. He was sporting a golden prosthetic eye this morning. He nodded emphatically, and Kril cackled as he dragged a chest into the centre of the room. It was five feet long, three wide, and the same deep. That much wood would once have been an extravagance among the tribes. Heavy and difficult to transport, only the very wealthy could afford such a sturdily built container.

"It has come to our attention that we had some unwanted guests. Parasites that had infested a host to suck the life from it. We wish to return them to where they came from for disposal," I said. Kril dragged the heavy box in front of the now nervous Beauties and flung back the lid. He did not do a 'ta da' as he did so, but that was very much the vibe. A malicious revelation.

The women shied away and vomited while the four brothers went pale.

"What is this barbarism? Whose heads are these?" Kanash demanded.

"They were your colleagues. I can't rule out that some of them belonged to Patricia, but the handful we questioned all confirmed they belonged to Jeremy. Jezza is a bit of a prick, it seems," I said.

"Why did you remove their beautiful eyes?" wailed Shu. Her sisters tried to shush her, shooting fearful looks at us. The stamp of several Huskar's feet, iron-shod sandals crunching under their massive weight, outside the tent flap put paid to any thoughts of running they might have had.

"Standard operating procedure, that's the term from Mond's world, I think?" Jagapan chuckled, and I nodded.

"Blinding them stops them from casting most spells. It's also the first part of breaking them loose from the conditioning, so they can talk freely. Soulbound aren't able to betray their lord under normal circumstances. People often take for granted how important vision is, and losing it forever is a terrifying experience," I said as though I was discussing a recipe for cooking chicken. "Then the pain, a lot of pain, reinforces how powerless they are and breaks them free, for long enough at any rate. The nomads have a long history of brutality; no one would deny that. Sometimes it's a useful trait to have."

"Monsters!" hissed Jinsi as she tried to comfort Shu.

"Slipping into a man's tent wearing his wife's face is more monstrous than anything we've done," growled Kril. "You creatures are–" he sputtered for a moment as he struggled for the words. The revelation of the extent of the infiltration had sent him into paroxysms of rage at our earlier meeting. "– filth. Not even human anymore," he finished in a growl.

"We do not fill chests with rotting heads! We bring joy and love in the name of the lord of Roses. But roses aren't just beautiful!" Shu hissed. "Best beware the thorns!"

"You will be escorted back to your lord, unharmed. But you will take with him my gift and my answer." If I were going to be the god of killing, and it was that or die, I would need to start leaning into it.

"Our lord already knows your answer, savage. It was known from the very beginning. Raymond Cobbler, murderer extraordinaire, a fallen man who found a home among uncultured degenerates. Driven by death and violence, obsessed with war. A monster that wears the skin of a man. We will carry your message, but you can bear your gift to him yourself," hissed Panash.

"Namol. Janash, you remember how she was sanctified? How malformed she was before her blessing?" Shu gently lifted an eyeless, severed head from the chest by its long brown hair, thickly matted with blood. "She became such a sight! And these bastards have taken her beauty from us forever! She will never ascend!" Shu cradled the head against her breasts and rocked back and forth.

"Exemplar, we should–" Panash began, taking a step toward her.

"It's too late. You knew the potential cost, Physical. Sisters." Shu looked up, dropping the head as she climbed to her feet, leaving a long red stain down the front of her dress. "We bloom eternal!"

Jagapan moved like lightning, appearing next to me and pushing me back. I stumbled slightly, only catching sight of the change from around his body.

The women put down roots, thick, gnarled tendrils shooting down into the packed earth of the tent. Their skin changed colour, from pale or dusky hues to a lambent green. Hair grew long and shaggy, their perfect coiffures turning into thistletops of stringy white filaments.

The men had it worse. The roots reached out to touch them, and they shriveled. Their vital fluids somehow pulled into whatever the three concubines were transforming into, the roots pulsing as they turned the men into raisins.

Jagapan yanked out a blade from storage, a foot-long knife, and hacked at the tendrils that grew towards us. I took my own sword out as well and hurled the chief back behind me, through the tent walls, into the safety beyond.

"Get out, Kril!" I snarled as I moved towards the tangle of roots and thorns the women had become. The old man leapt back to avoid a sweeping bough, covered in spiny bark, then dropped into a crouch and pushed his hands into the ground. His fingers bit deep into the solid dirt, then he spat between them.

I threw a firewall to land at the centre of the thing the women had become and carved the spell's path to double and triple over itself, focusing the potency into as small an area as possible. The sword flicked up, slicing at a branch that grasped out for me.

As I dodged back from another attack, the pair of Huskar outside yanked the felt away and lunged forward with their swards flashing down. Tiny shoots shot out from the amorphous plant and burrowed under their skin. They screamed as lines crept up their ankles and shins, turning the skin above green. Then they, too, began to shrink and contract. The thin little vines swelled as they fed on the giants, the main body of the thing, still crowned with three blooms of white hairs despite the fire, grew as well.

"It's already dug in deep. The old roots are feeding it! I can't fight it with them!" called Kril as he stood back up. I jumped back and lashed out with my sword, a horizontal slash intercepting a falling branch. The part I cut off bounced against my shoulder, and whatever life remained in the thing caused it to latch onto me. As soon as I felt the tendrils creep under my skin, the thing began to grow rapidly. Feeding on my semi-divine blood, no doubt.

With my right hand, which wasn't being turned into a bloody gorse bush of prickles, I dropped my sword and hurled Kril out. I pulled at the plant that was consuming my body with my free hand, and tendrils crawled up under my fingernails, locking my hand in place. Agony shot up my arm.

My entire body burst into flames, becoming almost transparent as every part of me was transformed into fire. One use a day. I hoped it was worth it.

It wasn't. Whatever the hell this thing was, it fed on the flames, using the energy to fuel its growth. I cast Shape Earth and disappeared into the ground. The solid clay flowed open for me, and closed above. As my senses spread out around me, I realised what Kril had meant.

What was happening on the surface was less than ten percent of the story. Like an iceberg, the bulk of the thing was hidden and growing rabidly. Roots wormed through the soil, consuming everything in their path. Anything semi-organic was reduced to husks and used to fuel further growth. The fire above was killing the thing, but the resources it pulled from underground, from twisted roots and long-buried seeds, dead bodies, and the bacteria and fungi that called them home, all went into fueling the thing's expansion.

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I tried to drag the thing off, shaping the dirt into granite fingers that tugged and ripped, but some little part of the thing always broke off and started the process again. I moved back towards the surface, aiming to interrupt the squads of nomads and Huskar hurrying toward the disturbance, their footfalls echoing down to me through my expanded perception.

Visions of what was to come flickered through my mind. That goddamn boon from Chronos was more trouble than it was worth, especially as the two most likely options were what I could only describe as suboptimal. Either that thing would expand and grow like a cancer, sucking the life from everything around it until it was hundreds of miles across, or it would merge with me, and be even worse.

I cut under it, using my magic to create a granite blockade, a foot thick, to separate the flowering part on the surface from the bulk of the body below. As I hit the surface and explode back into sunlight on a stone column, I used phase, a spell I hadn't had much use for previously. A vision had shown it would be the only chance I had. As I slid upwards, my body no longer tangible but still standing on the enchanted rock, the bits infecting me fell free and quickly withered on the platform at my feet.

I sent out orders via the soul bonds. I was starting to use that particular power too much. Everyone grabbed their shit and ran. Wagons were abandoned, but every human, Huskar, and animal was soon running for the edge of the camp.

I felt like I was on a tent pole as the cloth of soul threads quickly spread out from me. As soon as they were clear, I cast Burning Skies, once again focusing it onto the now ruined tent. The flowering part had grown to some fifteen feet across, the three white heads of blossom swaying as it expanded. Every single fireball fell on that spot. For fifteen seconds, dozens, hundreds of them drilled deep into the dirt, cutting a long shaft down into the ground that glowed at the edges.

When it was done, a smoking crater remained; the upper section of the creation and parts of the hidden chunk had been obliterated, but in my mind, I could still see it. The voracious roots were spreading, more slowly now but just as unrelentingly. All they'd need was another potent source of energy.

"Get the wagons moving! It's not dead!" I yelled as I jumped back to the ground. I examined my tunic. Another one ruined, Torn and marred by blue-gold blood. I should just wear the invulnerable one all the time and forget about laundry.

I cast Shape Earth again and began creating a hardened surface, only six inches of stone this time. The soil propelled me as I bent it to my will and began building a shield around the site of the attack. Kril had been right. I didn't know half as much as I ought to about magic.

"How can it not be dead, Mond?" demanded the old man when he caught up to me. I used the dirt to heave another wagon away from the ever-expanding edge of my horizontal wall.

"It's hungry. I can feel it under the earth, probing for the surface, trying to stretch out far enough to get back to the light." I glanced up at a squad of Huskar, "MOVE THEM!" I waved a hand at a series of wagons blocking me from growing the disc on my next pass around.

Glimpse was away to the north, tracking the Parthil from above. None of our storage rings of beads was big enough to contain an entire wagon, and we wouldn't have enough of them anyway. We had to move. I'd sent riders to the city, a few meagre miles to the south. One benefit of Mortimer's mass depopulation was that, besides my army, I only needed to evacuate thousands of people, not the hundred thousand who once lived in the now largely empty city.

A tendril pierced the surface, but I snipped it off with the dirt, spreading the stone cap out to prevent another breakthrough. A long sip of a Pure Mana potion topped me back off, and I continued on my self-appointed task.

I could see the wagons snarling up to the north. In their panic, they were rushing and blocking the lanes that ran through the camp. Huskar stepped in; two of them could drag a wagon behind them at a sprint. The legion forts that surrounded the nomad camp would soon be empty. Pertabon didn't fuck around.

Four hours later, I strode across the granite cap I'd built to try and find my sword. The growth had finally slowed, but I'd had to create a mile-wide block of granite. It had been too heavy, in places it had cracked, and nomads and giants had burned the tendrils back until I could fix it. Even now, it felt precarious in my other-sense when I cast Shape Earth. The soil below was compacting and settling in places. I couldn't be sure it would hold.

"They can stop at Settal, or continue to Riverwheel if they want," I growled, in reference to the shit-sitters. I was tired of having to deal with people, and I couldn't be sure the thing below us was finished. If it had burned all its fuel, we would be fine. If it were playing dead and had some hidden reserves left, it could slip past the makeshift defences and reach the surface again.

"They aren't happy," Kril said, spitting at the stone. "Some, mostly from the docks, are refusing to leave."

"It's on them if they stay. I think it's done, but I can't be sure." I stopped and retrieved my sword. The fireball barrage had thrown it clear of the initial bloom. "We need a counter to this, Kril. We can't just glass mile-wide chunks of the earth if it happens again."

"What would you recommend?" he asked with a grin.

"Golems? They're not organic. We need to bring them into the fold, not keep them outside the camp."

"The warriors don't like them, Mond," he said gently.

"Who gives a fuck what they like?" I had Bob patrolling the perimeter now, having forgotten about him while he sat in storage in the heat of the moment.

"It might work. They can be kept in storage in the meantime," Kril offered.

"What the hell was that thing?" I demanded, knowing it was a pointless question.

"Death had amalgams, why not life?" The old Dreamer asked.

"They all melted together. Then sucked the men dry," I muttered. "Find Pertabon and grill him on the high-end Life Affinity spells. You know what I've got. See if he knows about anything else. What a fucking mess." I set out towards the retreating wagons as he headed to the west.

We would march north. Once they were well clear, I was going to create a firebreak on the surface. If any spark of life remained in the amalgam, I didn't want it to have any food nearby should it resurface. It was like a nuclear meltdown; a huge area needed to be cleared out, and no one knew how long before the place would be 'safe' again. I scratched at my arm where it had burrowed under my skin, the faint thought that some speck had escaped and was lurking inside me filled me with a sense of dread.

What kind of madman created 'diplomats' who were also biological nukes? If they had done that in the night, or in what was left of the city, the tumour would have grown far too large before we could organise a defence.

It was an option of last resort. Shu had said something, then one of the men had tried to argue. They had all known what she meant, but the blokes hadn't been too hot on the idea. I couldn't trust any Soulbound, not the Beauties or the Scholars. Back on the Windspite, Jintsu had said he could destroy the ship when he realised who I was. But he'd only had trinkets.

None of Amir's Soulbound had shown anything like this power. Would the soldier have trusted his minions enough to give it to them? He'd have known they couldn't turn the power on him; no Soulbound could seriously attack their master. He'd had a beast tamer affinity to take control of the sea monsters, and the Source of Hadesti…

Was that it? Jeremy has a Source? I turned the idea over in my mind. It felt right, despite it being pure supposition. But which god?

I stalked north, kicking at the occasional stone that hadn't been melted into the hardtop I'd made. Once I was clear, I began to glare at the ground around me, waiting for some brown or green shoot to emerge and grab at my ankle.

None did, but I wouldn't be happy until we were many miles away from this place. The dust cloud from the retreating wagons choked the air as I followed behind them. Then I turned, and the skies turned the colour of blood.

***

"We'll camp ten miles away today, and move on tomorrow," Pertabon said, eyeing the rings of smoking craters around the massive slab of stone.

"Leave some units behind to watch. They aren't to engage. Don't even think about letting them get up close with that fucking thing," I growled.

"Several squads of the First will see to it. And as requested, we've sent a detachment to the docks for this ship you hope will come," the Huskar said, climbing back to his feet and dusting off his knees.

"Jandak and the Fourth?" I asked, glancing up at him.

"Moving quickly. It will take them a week or two to reach the Worldspine. The passes should be clear when the main body reaches them. Otherwise, we'll be stuck to the west until spring. Winter is getting closer, Legio. It might be worth cycling some troops to the north for some time away from the front. The tribes would benefit as well. Not even they can be on campaign all year."

Assimilation of the Source of The Cycle: 7% complete

I grimaced at the report. One percent a day, give or take. I didn't have till next year. I told the Huskar as much.

"There is no rush, Legio. They cannot approach us unnoticed. We can rebuild our forces. More Huskar will have come of age since we marched south and completed their training. Fresh Legions, reinforcements. We're well supplied, but the soldiers need rest. And today has confused them. Something so bad that you turned so much land to stone, and then burned it back for a hundred yards more? They are unnerved."

"I'll talk to them. Pick two legions to cycle out to the north. They can swap out with the guards at Riverwheel and summon whatever new forces are available. The nomads will be fine. Their prodigal sons are on the way home, according to Glimpse. Another few thousand fighters to add to the pot," I argued. The giant looked down at me, his face impassive, but the tension around his eyes showed me what he thought. His helm slipped into place, and he gave the chest-thumping salute of the legions.

I watched as he walked off, then turned back to the south. Prender was the key. There must be other candidates, but none that I knew of. I'd liked the kid as well.

How do you feel about seafood, crow? I sent to Glimpse.

The eyes are too small as a rule. And if they aren't, then I don't want to eat them. The acerbic thought from the bird made me chuckle.

Need you to find our young friend and his boat. He needs to go east with us, I sent.

He could still be days away, and you head east tomorrow.

The source isn't going to give me enough time, Glimpse. Push comes to shove, I'll be getting you to fly me on ahead, and I'll have to do it solo again.

Do what? I could imagine him cocking his head on the side and turning back and forth so he could look at me with both beady black eyes.

Take out the last two Shikrakyn, I replied.

As in kill?

Maybe. Two kidnappings are fine if we can get away with it. Otherwise…