The Resplendent Knight snarled. “You speak heresy. You will be purged.”
It was tempting to kill this guy, but I had to capture him alive so that I could squeeze out some information about this crusade. I had enough on my plate with the mysterious Hooded Man and the continued threat of the Blood God’s growing power, so the sooner this problem was dealt with, the better.
The Resplendent Knight and I circled each other for a few moments, him with his golden longsword and me with my kusarigama. He darted in with a lunge, swift and precise, but I turned the attack with my kusarigama’s blade and followed up with a slash at his face. It was intended to miss, of course—getting information out of him would be a tad difficult if the top of his cranium and most of his brains ended up on the ground.
He bobbed his head to dodge the strike and countered with a swift cut aimed at my arm. I jerked my arm back and whipped the kusarigama’s chain end across his ankle. The power of three skeletons was channeled through the blow, and the bones of the knight’s lower leg and ankle shattered with a sickening crack. He screamed and collapsed in the dirt.
I darted forward and kicked his sword out of his hand before I pinned him down with my heel on his throat. As he gasped for air, I pressed my boot down with enough force to choke him, but not quite enough to crush his windpipe.
“I want to know everything.” I pushed down a little harder with my heel.
He gasped and writhed as his face turned purple.
“You’re going to tell me everything you know about this farce of a crusade,” I said. “And why Elandriel wants me dead.”
The gasping knight looked around and saw the ugly truth: my counter-ambush had worked. He was the last of his men left alive.
“That’s it.” I looked down at him and stared into his bulging eyes. “It’s over. You’re fucked, and your dead men will soon be undead.”
“Never,” he hissed, and spittle flew from his mouth. “I won’t tell you a thing, you hell-devil.”
“That’s what they all say,” I said calmly. “But they all talk, eventually.”
Suddenly, his eyes bulged with raw terror, and he gasped as he stared at the sky behind me. I turned around and eased off the pressure of my heel on his throat for just a second. But a second was enough. He whipped out the dagger on his hip and plunged it up under his chin, using all of his strength to drive the blade through his mouth and nasal cavity and into his brain.
“Ah, shit,” I muttered as I turned back and saw his eyes roll back in their sockets.
Isu walked up to me and flipped up the visor of her helm. “They’re all dead now, so please can I relieve myself of this armor? My bosom feels like it will soon protrude out of my back.”
“Go ahead,” I said glumly as I stared with disappointment at the dead Commander at my feet.
He’d make a great zombie, of course, so I had my second prize.
The members of my party gathered around me as the first rays of the sun started to paint the tops of the mountains with red fire.
“We made short work of these fucksticks,’ I said. “But now, life has become a little more difficult. It seems that we’re officially enemies of the Church of Light, so we can expect more ambushes and battles like this.”
“Even more reason to leave Prand as soon as we can,” Rami-Xayon said.
“I agree,” Friya added. “Vance, you must travel to Yeng to find the missing Dragon Gauntlet. Now that we know that the Blood God is by no means defeated, there is an even greater need to acquire the means to destroy him.”
“Hmm, yes, the Church of Light has little power in Yeng,” Rami-Xayon said. “If we can cross the ocean, you will at least be free of that threat. I must travel there as well, to reestablish my temples and gain worshipers. Their prayers and faith will give me the power I need to help you in your fight against the Blood God.”
Anna-Lucielle stepped forward. Now that Anna’s body and spirit had been merged with that of the Charm Goddess, Anna’s memories had also been melded with Lucielle’s.
“Before your uncle came and besieged my fortress,” she said, speaking as Lucielle, “a traveler came to me from Yeng. She was one of the few Yengish who still worshiped me, and she made the perilous journey across the ocean to seek me out.”
“Is that true?” I asked Rami-Xayon. “Do people in Yeng worship the Charm Goddess?”
“They used to, centuries ago, but now, as Lucielle says, there are very few who still do.”
“All right,” I said, “go on, Anna-Lucielle.”
“This traveler who came to my fortress,” she continued, “brought some strange news from Yeng, news that I thought insignificant at the time. But now that we’ve found out about the Dragon Gauntlets, and the missing one being in Yeng, it seems to be a rather important bit of information.”
“What news did this traveler bring of Yeng?” Rollar asked, intrigued. His fascination with the old religions and old gods was as strong as ever.
“She told me that a shadow cult had risen in Yeng. And that strange things had been happening there. Talk of terrifying creatures that came in the night and devoured human beings whole, sometimes destroying entire villages.”
“What sort of creatures?” I asked. “And what does this shadow cult have to do with these monsters?”
“She said that the monsters rarely left any survivors when they attacked. The few who had survived reported armored scales on their huge bodies, unearthly fire, huge talons, reptilian faces. And this is where things get interesting: the shadow cult secretly worships the Goddess of Dragons.”
“The Draco Cult?” Rami-Xayon scoffed. “It’s nonsense, and the worshipers are a bunch of delusional fools. They’ve been around in Yeng for decades. Still,
