170 Chapter One Hundred and Seventy - Errantry (1/2)
”I was found innocent! Innocent!”
Errant's fist crashed against the man's jaw, and he slammed to the ground. Deftly, he removed the golden ring and its warding magic on the man's left hand, and as the man whimpered and looked up, he met Errant's silver eyes.
”Ah.” The one word made the handsome young man's heart plummet. ”Lust rides on you like a fat horse. Pride spews from you like sewage. And on your hands...” The man swallowed as the silver eyes dropped. ”Three? No, four murders.”
”You-you can't kill me! I was found innocent!” he protested, slurring around his aching jaw.
”The Temple was totally aware of your hush money and threats to those who would testify against you, and mysterious accidents happening to several others. Do you think the servants of Justice are stupid?” Grace began to hum with golden light, and the man tried to scramble back, to find Errant moving right with him without taking a step.
”Rapist graduating to murder. Psychopath and entitled ass thinking he can do anything because his family has power and influence. You are a rabid dog, Praethus Comwell, and rabid dogs get put down.”
The young man started to scream, but the Wrath of Heaven cut him short. Vivic fire combined with the Wrath, and his flesh burned away in a flash of Land-feeding. His bones would take a few more minutes.
Errant let the Sound Bubble fade away, looking around the bastard's room. After a little thought, flames came up around Grace, and he set the bed alight quickly.
The family knew about all of this, and deserved to be punished, too. They probably had magic to control fire, but that wasn't going to be very useful when he ignited the entire back side of their manor...
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The wagon was overturned, heaved over by brute force. The smell of many chemicals of dubious origin and make filled the air, while the horses fled a safe distance away.
The big man who served as driver and bodyguard lay on the ground, life's blood pumping out his neck toward the staring head a few feet away. Errant's foot, five times heavier than normal, kept Nomin Quale securely pinned.
”Six people dead, nine scarred, with twenty-nine dependents.” Errant held up a bottle, and plunged a long needle into it. ”You do an excellent job changing your name and how you harvest for the Lord of Bones. You serve the Second Horseman, eh? Disease and poison, such a cute devotee. And because you don't use magic, well, hard to track, isn't it?
”Still, do you know what happens to alchemically-energized daemonic ichor when suffused with the Wrath of Heaven?” The vial in his hand glowed suddenly, the inky black stuff within igniting with holy light, and he slowly backstopped it.
”It becomes a Ravage. You know, like holy water for sins.” He held up the syringe, designed to be used on horses, and a drop of silver-gold liquid fell from it. ”Totally harmless to most folk, of course. But if you've been accumulating that fat tally of sin for your masters, well...”
”No, no!” the shaven-headed man in apothecary robes tried to stutter, and the syringe was stabbed into his neck, and slowly released into his carotid artery.
His skin began to light up in patterns of blood vessels, his eyes shimmered with celestial designs. His lips glowed, the beads of sweat on his forehead were like crystals, the blood dribbling like his mouth began to burn.
His hair began to smoke, his teeth cracked, his tongue blazed. He screamed as the sins he had accumulated on his aura became fuel for the Ravage tearing at his mind and body.
Spontaneous combustion and melting bones followed about thirty seconds later, after a virtual infinity of pain. The speed of it was a direct indicator of just how much evil this bastard had done. The Harsites believed him guilty of the deaths of hundreds of innocents...
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”I understand family love. I really do,” Errant said, frogmarching the sweating man forwards. ”But, you know, there's solutions for this stuff that don't involve just killing the afflicted. And somehow, you managed to choose the absolute worst of them.”
”I-I just wanted to help him! He can't control himself-”
”And the Curse could have been lifted from him with one trip to a temple of Sylune, which could have been arranged by force if he refused. Instead, you locked him away in containment, except when he escaped and killed at least sixteen people, all to save your damn family name!”
Errant threw back the bar, hauled the iron door open, and, totally ignoring the many scratch marks and dents on it, threw the man inside.
Cries and shouts sounded from within, and the man looked up in horror at his father, mother, sister... and his older brother, who was manacled not very securely to the back wall, staring at them all in horror.
”Don't worry. I'll kill him in the morning,” Errant said, glancing at the rising moon. The older Ristwick brother was already starting to get a bit hairy. ”I left you knives, but, you know, you really should have carried silver, no?”
The door slammed shut, the bar came down, and the screams started from within.
The howls started in about ten minutes. They built for about half an hour, and then iron protested and the screams grew shriller.
They were replaced by the sound of ripping meat and crushing bone, ending with remarkable speed. After all, like all his other victims, they weren't carrying silver.
The abuse on the door started after about an hour of feasting, but his Ward had overlain them, and they would hold; the werewolf inside had no chance of getting through them.
In the morning, he'd feel the pain he'd inflicted on so many others... and lose himself to the beast entirely, most likely. Instead of getting help and removing the Curse, he'd chosen to hide it and prey on people, all just to save face.
And then... his skull would serve as a compass to the werewolf that had infected him, or the party that had Cursed him to begin with, and they could get to the true root of the problem...
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”Don't bother. They are all dead.”
The young man with the sword in hand looked around in a panic. The attack had been too sudden, too brutal. Flashes of light, a sword sweeping out, here, there, coming from all sides and reaping them one after another.
”Colin Flinster, right?” The young man in leather and mail gawked at the silver-eyed fiend who had spoken in between whistling for the horses that had scattered when their riders were summarily blasted or cut from their saddles.
”I-I...” Too stunned and frightened, the young man stared at the freak who had just slaughtered sixty men, like trying to fight an angel from Heaven...
”Your mother thought you'd fallen in with some bad men. She was right. Rundel's Company here are paid raiders and pillagers, whose favorite targets are small thorps and isolated farmsteads, always in the pay of this master or another one.”