“I can feel it too,” Friya remarked grimly, thundering along on her undead direwolf to my right. “Something evil is happening. I hope that the worst has not already come to pass.”
“Whatever else has happened, before I breathe my last, I’m gonna rip my uncle’s fucking heart out of his chest. Mark my words.”
Now that we were close enough to know we wouldn’t be ambushed, I closed my eyes, relying on Fang to carry me safely (which of course, he would do), and catapulted my mind up into Talon’s body. Controlling it with the expert finesse of a puppetmaster, I flapped its wings hard and sent it up a good mile or so above the ground, then surged on and circled Lucielle’s fortress. I hoped the Charm Goddess might be holed up in one final safe cellar or walled-in courtyard of the castle and that we could charge in and save her at the last second, just as Rodrick and his minions were about to batter the final door down. But what I saw through the harpy’s eyes soon showed me this was nothing but an empty fantasy.
The formerly exquisite, fairy-tale-looking castle had been smashed to smithereens. The damage my party was able to see from the ground was only a small part of the destruction my uncle’s war machines and troops had wrought. Not only were the outer walls reduced to rubble, but almost all of the towers were shot full of house-sized holes, probably from some monstrously huge trebuchet or catapult, and many of the tall towers and spires had collapsed. The buildings inside the castle had been demolished for the most part. The scale of the destruction was insane. It was obvious there had been incredibly fierce fighting here, and it was equally obvious who had won.
When I swooped the harpy down low to examine the ground situation, I saw the bodies. Corpses of servants; corpses of troops equipped in ornate armor that shone like chrome; corpses of other troops, likely my uncle’s, wearing red and brown armor. There were far fewer of the latter. To the credit of the Charm Goddess, her soldiers seemed to have made a number of valiant last stands throughout the castle, doing their utmost to protect their goddess.
It didn’t seem like they’d shown their bravery very recently though. These bodies were not fresh. They weren’t rotting yet, but they had been dead for at least a day, maybe two or three. This meant, I realized with a terrible sinking feeling in the pit of my belly, that my uncle had taken Lucielle to the Temple of Blood. The only question worth considering now was how close he was to sacrificing her in the Blood Ritual, if he hadn’t already done so.
I jerked my mind out of the harpy’s body and back into my own. I ordered my party to stop. Confused, they reined in their mounts, slowed down, and eventually came to a stop in a cloud of dust.
“It’s all over up ahead,” I muttered. “My uncle has come and gone. He’s already got Lucielle. All we can do now is head straight to the Temple of Blood and hope we’re not too late.”
Anna let out a piercing cry that had us all spin around. Her eyes rolled back in her head, and she started frothing at the mouth.
“Elyse, you’re a healer,” I said. “Can you help her?”
“Help me get her off her horse, quickly.” Elyse jumped off her undead mount and raced over to Anna.
I followed suit and gently lifted the convulsing girl off her skeletal horse. Before I could lay her down on the ground, her eyes suddenly went back to normal, and she stopped shaking. She began to speak, but it was not her voice coming out of her mouth.
“Vance Chauzec, God of Death,” a hypnotic feminine voice said, “I have a message for you.”
Rami-Xayon jumped off her undead war-spider and jogged over to us.
“Lucielle, the Charm Goddess is with us!” she said, staring alternately and me and Anna. “Vance, can you not feel the presence of another deity?”
It was true. I couldn’t tell exactly how I knew it, but the woman in my arms had temporarily transformed into a goddess. Lucielle was using Anna as a mouthpiece.
“Rodrick has me,” she said, “and will begin his ritual of sacrifice at dawn. It will be a blood dawn, where the sun rises in a shade of pure red. He has taken me to the Temple of Blood, and here I am a prisoner. I am greatly weakened and badly wounded, and I am using the last reserves of my strength to send you this message. You must do everything you can to stop the sacrifice and destroy this vile Temple.”
“I’m on it, Lucielle,” I said. “How do I do it? How do I destroy the Temple of Blood?”
“I… can’t… hold on… much… longer,” Lucielle murmured, her voice becoming terribly faint. “What you… need is… in the… crypt of… my ruined castle… buried… under… beauty…”
Anna’s eyes rolled back in their sockets once again, and she started convulsing. When the fit passed, she gasped, coughed weakly, and opened her eyes. She looked around, confused and surprised.
“Vance, why are you holding me?” she asked. “What’s going on?”
“Lucielle just sent an urgent message through you,” I said. “We have until dawn to stop the sacrifice. But to completely destroy the Temple of Blood, we need to get something from her castle. I don’t know what the hell it is, but it’s buried in the crypt, ‘under beauty,’ whatever the fuck that means. We have to act now.”
Everyone agreed, and we remounted and rode like the wind to the wrecked castle. I used my harpy to reconnoiter the place. Thankfully, there were no traps or ambushes.
The drawbridge to the huge, gleaming white castle was still lowered when we arrived at the gates. These had been smashed in by
