NOVEL NEXT Chapter 101: The Heretic
The Heretic
There was almost something human about him. The face had two toad faces, little larger than that of a bullfrog, growing out of his cheeks, and on the hand that held the staff, finger-length toad legs dangled or waved without the appearance of conscious control on his behalf. But among all that, there was a human mouth and two serene, pale blue eyes, that would have looked calm and kind if not for the fact that they were simply squeezed in wherever there weren't toad parts on his face.
"Heroes, you have finally come," he said, and his voice was angelic, high and song-like.
"Who are you? Let go of that imp!" Will said.
"This denizen of the pits will bathe in the light of the Bufos Sanctus. If he can be purified, he will be. If not, he will die," the Toad Priest said.
"Could you explain yourself, please? I haven't heard of this sacred toad," Adam said.
The Toad Priest smiled with his lopsided lips, and he walked towards us, and as the light behind him faded, Chum seemed to get a second to catch his breath. Or he was too tired to cry out now. The priest walked up to Adam, and held his rough, toad-skinned hand to Adam's skinless, wrapped cheek.
"A pilgrim, seeking restoration, are you not?" The Priest said.
"A scholar, seeking knowledge," Adam said. I think I caught an edge of annoyance in his voice I didn't know him capable of.
The toad face on the left half of the Priest's visage croaked, eyes flashing open in an instant.
"Bufos Sanctus is unknowable. It demands your faith, not questions," the Priest said.
My HUD spell was still up. I'd been making it a habit to keep it up most of the time lately, and now that my mana regeneration was high enough that I was fully topped off by the time the spell ran out, I made sure to refresh it whenever it dropped off. The 'Priest of Bufos Sanctus' was level 21- significantly higher than any of us, but not hopelessly so- but in the illusion of my spell his name floated above him in an intricate, golden gothic text.
I was more of a tabletop than video game guy back on Earth, but you'd have to live in a cabin in the woods to be as nerdy as I was and not recognize an indication of a boss type enemy.
I slammed my staff on the stone floor, and I spoke. I was pretty sure where this was going, and felt like pulling off the band-aid one way or another.
"I am Alex Vorhal, Wizard of the Sentinel Path, Chronomancer Abjurer, and you shall release my familiar, or you shall learn how paltry the protection of your toad god truly is," I said in my best wizard voice. Strangely enough Will and Anna had heard it plenty back on Earth, wizardly hubris being one of the most fun things to role-play, but for everyone else I must have looked insane. Anna facepalmed. Sarah looked at me like I'd spouted frog-legs for ears. Even Will seemed to be done with my shit.
Everyone looked at me like I was crazy, except apparently, our host, who took my proclamation deadly seriously.
The Toad Priest looked up sharply, all six of the eyes on his face fixing upon me. He croaked, with his human throat and the other two joined in. His neck filled with air like a balloon, and he croaked again, and it was as loud as a scream. He stormed towards me, raising his own staff and proclaimed:
"Do not bring your twisted arcana into my sanctum, and sully not the name of the most sacred of all that crawl. There is hope yet for redemption, for salvation for you and your hero friends. Cr-waawak. No, I shall remain humble and calm. I know you come from far away. The divine is strange for you. I Shall Be Patient," he said.
"Explain to us, please, what this redemption you offer would entail," Adam said.
"You must accept him inside you. In his aspect of the Sacred Mother, the Toad bears his children in wounds on his back, where they may grow and then hatch in safety. The same sacred procedure shall be performed upon you, a few divine incisions in your back, and the godpoles shall grow within them, and then! Oh!" he said.
And he threw open his robes and let them fall off held on to his body only by the belt, so that it now seemed like he was wearing a layered skirt. He turned his back to us. It was muscular and would have been healthy, if it wasn't a scarred, pock-marked canvas of wounds, out of which squirming and malformed toads in the stage between a tadpole and a toad full-grown were pushing their way out with varying degrees of success. A few fell to the floor and flopped around there, while a majority were clearly fused into his flesh.
Anna flinched back. Will and Sarah looked like they were going to be sick. I gripped my staff. Adam looked curious.
"And does that work?" he said, taking a step closer to the Priest.
"Very well! If you dare refuse his gifts, then so be- Wait, what?" The Priest said.
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"The toad implantation procedure," Adam said, "What benefits have you derived from it?"
Which rather seemed to knock the wind out of the Priests righteous sermon.
"It- It is not without sacrifice!" he said.
"And yet it clearly has some benefit to you. Tell me, do you control the toads here, or do they simply allow you pass unharassed? And, if so, is it due to the implantation procedure, or some other aspect of your faith?" Adam said.
"They hear me. That is, they hear him through me! Obey or not, it is not for me to demand the obeisance of holy creatures. But they have spared my life so far," the Priest said.
"And the damage to your mental capacity? Are you aware of your insanity, and how insane would you say you were before you decided to undergo the procedure?" Adam said.
I winced. It didn't seem like the mad priest would take being called mad well. And indeed, with the last question he puffed up his chest and his neck and walked towards Adam with renewed fury.
"Enough! Either you shall take his children on your back, or you shall perish in his light! Choose now," the Priest said.
"I will accept your god, I have enough scars. But you will have to let the imp go first," Adam said. And the priest actually considered it.
"It is not proper to haggle for his blessing. It is a gift, one you should be honored to receive," the Priest said.
The Toad Priest grabbed his face, covering the eyes of the toads on it, I realized, as he paced back and forth, and then, finally:
"CRRRRROWWK! It is done, fine, agreement reached!" he finally said, and dramatically pointed the staff towards Chum. The shafts of light piercing him released and he flopped half-way to the ground before he gathered himself and started flapping his little wings becoming airborne just before hitting the ground.
What I and, apparently, everyone else on our team was thinking was that Adam was bluffing to get the priest distracted and Chum free, and that we should pounce as soon as it was done. But instead, as soon as chum was free, Adam began unwrapping his own torso. The bandages stuck to his skinless flesh, and I imagined it must hurt terribly as they ripped away with a dry, crusted sound. I'd seen him once before, when he was just born and that had been bad enough- he'd looked like a freshly skinned man, dripping and bloody. Now he looked like an anatomy specimen, dried, jerky-like muscle moving unnaturally strand by strand as he turned his back to the priest.
"You may proceed," he said, as we looked at him questioningly. But his face didn't betray any secret plan. It seemed that he wanted to get some tadpoles implanted in his back. And you know what, by now, I wasn't really going to stop anyone from doing anything that wasn't hurting anyone but themselves.
"This won't make you attack us or anything?" Anna said.
"The blessing of the Toad will heal what is broken inside, and replace it with divine ichor," the Priest said.
I saw Adam make a little sign with his finger. If not for my artificially boosted mind stats I never would have visualized the sign for the sigil of my Telepathy spell. I cast it immediately, figuring that if the Priest was going to aggro from me casting any spells we may as well get over it. But he didn't even react, looking for and finding something like a scalpel or an embalming hook among the rubble of the room.
What the fuck are you doing. This is clearly going to cause trouble for you and for all of us, I said to Adam through the telepathic link.
I am curious. If it begins affecting my mind I will know instantly. Be ready, but do not interrupt unless necessary, Adam said back.
"Alright, his choice, I guess. Let's take a few steps back," I said, very unconvinced, with a dozen spells ready on the tip of my tongue. The others followed me, retreating without turning our faces away, as a limping Chum fluttered towards us and got behind me.
"Fucking heavens, boss, that guy's nuts," Chum said.
"Which one?" Anna said.
"Ha, fair point. But that shit's real radiance. It was eating away at my damned soul, you know," Chum said.
"Fuck," Will said.
"What?" I said.
"Tell you later. Let's keep an eye on your friend," Will said.
I think I must have blacked out most of what I saw for the next ten minutes from there. It is enough to say that the hooked scalpel-like implement was utilized extensively, frog eggs were… inserted, and even Adam couldn't remain perfectly stoic through the entire experience. And yet, at no point did he signal distress, and even as I sent him several more telepathic messages he responded with a will to carry on this twisted experiment.
Curiously enough, it was after they were done that everything went to shit. As the last tadpole was implanted, several things happened. First, radiant light burst from Adam's back, but he seemed unharmed by it. The Priest went entirely mad, croaking for joy and jumping up and down. And then the pool in the middle of the cavern began glowing and bubbling. A voice reverberated, round and deep, and it said nothing that we could understand despite the Priest screaming in ecstasy upon hearing it, dashing to and kneeling in front of the pool.
"Thank you! Thank you, my lord! I exist to serve, and I am overjoyed to expire for the same purpose," he said.
And the pool exploded in steam and white light, and as the mist cleared there was a figure, ten feet tall, with wings flying among the steam. While it was covered in the mist, it seemed angelic, and before the steam fled, there was a brief scream and a crunching sound for where the priest had been and we never saw him again. Then, from the mists emerged a figure in terrible mockery of both the sacred and the profane.
Where the priest had been a more or less human man covered in the rough skin of a toad in patches, this creature's skin was sewn together skins of a thousand toads. His face was sculpted into a mockery of handsomeness from the saggy, squishy flesh of the sacred creature, and the halo rapidly circling his head was a dozen toad eyeballs the size of tangerines looking in each direction at once.
His wings were made of frog legs and the sword he held aloft was aflame in a green-white light.