Book 13: Chapter 61: Misplaced Faith

Path of Dragons

Obrahim stood at the front of the column, righteous fury coursing through his body and mind. Through his very soul. The upstarts – the blasphemers and heretics – had resisted the will of the Synod for far too long. Thousands had died at their hands. Years of resistance. Decades of refusal to submit to godly authority. And now, at long last, they would all pay the ultimate price.

Finally, Vhalor, blessed be his name, had decided to fully unleash the Emerald Guard. And Obrahim – along with his regiment – was the tip of his spear. Some called the unquestioned leader of Ithalon the Emerald Tyrant.

And he was that.

He brooked no defiance. He would tolerate no resistance. When he chose to make an example, he did so with the full breadth of his power. That was the only way to rule. It was the only way to make everyone see that the good of all needed to take precedence over petty concerns like personal freedom or status.

For his part, Obrahim never really considered the fate of those he deemed beneath him. They were cursed by the abyss, as evidenced by their tumorous bodies and corrupted minds. That they were allowed to contribute at all was a mercy. That anyone tolerated their presence was proof of the Synod’s good will.

If it had been up to Obrahim, he would have slaughtered them all.

Corruption could not be allowed to take root. It didn’t matter if it was the abyssal sort or the taint of an idea, it should have been destroyed entirely. In his magnanimity, Vhalor allowed them all to live, though. And Obrahim, though his own morals dictated otherwise, knew better than to question the Emerald Tyrant.

He trusted the leader of the Synod, as was right and proper. He was a good soldier. A productive citizen of Ithalon. And he would follow his leader anywhere. He would do whatever Vhalor commanded, even if his personal feelings ran in the opposite direction.

His faith demanded it.

Eagerly, he marched forward, the heavy tromp of his boots kicking up dust and cracking pebbles underfoot. Behind him came nearly ten thousand members of the Emerald Guard, and nearly as many Red Priests followed in their wake. Silent Hunters ranged ahead, scouting the way and leading them to their quarry.

Soon enough, they would reach their destination and purge the heretics from the face of Gorveth. They’d fled Ithalon because they believed themselves superior. Because they thought they were exempt from the Synod’s mandates. They had abandoned their own people out of selfishness.

And they would pay.

The gods demanded it.

And Obrahim always obeyed the gods’ will.

He and the army continued to march, and over the next day, they managed to make quite a lot of progress. He’d spent more time than most outside of Ithalon’s walls. Sometimes, his expeditions were meant as training, a means to gain levels and improve his cultivation. Other times, he’d been sent on holy missions to punish the heretics.

He’d even gotten orders from the Emerald Tyrant himself, and on more than one occasion.

This was one of those times.

“General Obrahim,” Vhalor had said, deigning to reach out and touch his kneeling subordinate. “The time has come to purge our lands of the unbelievers. They sent a monster here to slay the Hollow Voice. For years, we have given them the benefit of the doubt. We have allowed them to exist in the hope that they will come back to the light. They have refused, and we cannot afford to allow them to exist any longer.”

After that, he had charged Obrahim with a holy mission – destroy those heretics and leave nothing behind. He took to it with the fervor of a true believer, and over the past few years, he had destroyed one settlement after another. He had left thousands of tumorous bodies in his wake.

But many more, he’d allowed to escape. To flee to what they believed to be a refuge.

As if any such thing existed on all of Gorveth. No one could hide from gods like Vhalor. Eventually, their wrath would fall upon the heretics.

And Obrahim was the instrument of that wrath. At his hands, so many had been purged. Now, only one settlement remained.

Dravkein.

The hub of heresy had stood for more than a century. The traitor – Zek, the Coward – led them, sheltering them under his corrupted embrace. No longer would the blasphemy of his existence be tolerated. No longer would he be allowed to live, his every breath an affront of the gods.

The Synod demanded his death, and Obrahim was more than happy to become their instrument.

The rest of the army wasn’t as committed as he was. Their faith was weak. Their paths meandering. Some of them even bore the marks of corruption upon their bodies.

Disgusting, every last one of them.

Only Obrahim was pure. Only Obrahim stood as the gods’ worthy representative. The Synod knew it. That was why he was given so much authority. That was why, among the Emerald Guard, he was second only to Vhalor himself.

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The gap between them was wide, but the ravine separating Obrahim from the common soldier was even wider.

He was a demi-god himself, and had been for nearly a century. One day, he intended to follow Vhalor into the realm of deification so they could join the ancestors who’d saved them from the abyss.

But that would not happen for a long, long time. Before it could, the heretics needed to feel Ithalon’s righteous fury.

Over the next few days, he led his army across the landscape. Normally, they would’ve had to fight for every step they took, but of late, the monsters had become far more diffuse than usual. Perhaps it had something to do with those pulses of vitality racing across the land.

For his part, Obrahim believed it was the beginning of the end. Evidence that the Synod’s work defying the abyss had begun to bear fruit. One day soon, the planet would be purged, and they would gain the favor of the World Tree.

So it had been foretold by every Seer in Ithalon.

It was only a matter of time before they saw better days. That could not happen while a single non-believer remained among them, though.

Obrahim intended to clear the way for his people’s salvation.

After another week, they finally crested a rise and saw Dravkein – in all its pitiful defiance – standing in the distance. They’d already entered the purview of the nine rings upon which they relied for their continued existence, and the final two circles – marked by paving stones – lay before the army.

But something was wrong.

The farms were fallow, and the city was obviously deserted.

The scouts among the Silent Hunters had already conveyed as much to Obrahim, but having it confirmed via his own eyes sent a current of rage through his mind.

“Where did they go?” he demanded, his grip tightening on the hilt of his sword. He had never craved battle. He didn’t care about the glory of victory. Instead, he was wholly committed to purging the heretics and giving his people a chance to reclaim the world.

The captain of the Silent Hunters hissed, “They have attempted to conceal the evidence of their passage, but we have found a trail leading north.”

“North? There is nothing in that direction,” Obrahim pointed out. In fact, if they’d gone that way, they would soon be dead. Even he would have hesitated before embarking on such a journey, and he didn’t have an entire city’s population to support or protect. “Are you certain?”

The Silent Hunter assured Obrahim that he was, indeed, sure.

Frustrated, Obrahim gave the order for his people to enter the city and search for survivors. Left unsaid was that they would plunder the settlement for anything valuable. Not that anyone expected wealth from a bunch of heretics, but there was a chance they’d managed to get their grubby hands on some treasure or another.

The army swept forward, trampling the few withered crops and entering the city. Obrahim remained on the outskirts, refusing to enter such an unholy place. He would only do so to kill the heretics, but with the city being abandoned, he saw no reason to sully himself.

For a while, it went according to plan. And against all odds, some of the soldiers managed to uncover caches of hastily abandoned food and a few chests full of treasure.

It was obvious that the residents had left in a hurry.

But then, after they’d been searching the settlement for a little more than an hour, everything went wrong.

A piercing scream announced the problem, and it was soon joined by the sound of metal clashing against metal.

“Ambush!” someone yelled.

Obrahim was moving before the entire word graced his ears. He leaped over the low wall and, rather than entering the dwelling where the scream had originated, he simply crashed through the wall.

An axe, glistening with red energy, very nearly removed his head for his trouble. He narrowly managed to duck beneath it, but he couldn’t avoid the next attack. Soon enough, he found himself skipping backward through the rubble of his own entrance.

The blow hadn’t harmed him.

Not really.

But it had taken him by surprise. His path ended when he slammed into another wall and crashed through it, only to come to rest inside another dwelling. Before he could recover, the building fell down around him.

Tons of stone buried Obrahim, but the pressure skittered off his armor, leaving him mostly unharmed. Once he’d recovered from the shock of the attack, he marshalled his strength and, with a mighty heave, shoved the stone aside.

The scene that met him was chaos.

Dozens of black-armored knights fought silently against his people, and that was just in the immediate area. From the sounds echoing through the alleys and avenues, the battle extended across the entire city.

One of the knights loomed over him, its axe held high.

Obrahim didn’t bother to block the oncoming blow. Instead, he attacked, shouldering into the thing with the full weight of his attributes. At the same time, he embraced Unbreakable Wall, summoning a translucent shield behind his enemy. The axe fell, skating ineffectually across his armor.

Obrahim hit the thing in a flying tackle, launching it backward. It only managed to move an inch before it slammed into Unbreakable Wall. The name of the ability was prophetic, and it did not give. The same could not be said for Obrahim’s opponent.

The black-armored knight crumpled, revealing nothing inside. Just red-tinted ethera that flowed from the rents in the armor like so much smoke. The thing collapsed into a pile of metal, lifeless and unmoving.

A quick stomp ensured that it would remain that way.

Obrahim let Unbreakable Wall dissipate as he looked around, and all he saw was chaos. He waded into battle, intent on bringing some order to the situation.

Everywhere he went, black knights fell. In some cases, his people had everything well in hand. In others, they had been overwhelmed by shock and the uncommon power of what he assumed to be conjured enemies.

In the end, it took nearly two hours to finish them all off, and in that time, almost a hundred good soldiers had died. More had been wounded.

And to his eternal annoyance, the fight had been nothing more than a distraction. Somehow, their supplies had been attacked and set aflame. The culprits – as described by the non-combatant support personnel – were tiny creatures that exploded once they’d reached their targets.

They weren’t all that dangerous. Even the non-combatants had only gotten a few minor burns out of the conflagration. However, their supplies hadn’t made it through unscathed. When Obrahim received the damage report, he very nearly killed the man who’d delivered it.

But he maintained control.

The purpose of the attack was clear. It was meant to delay them. And in that endeavor, it was successful. It would take at least a month to replenish their supplies from Ithalon, and it was only that quick because of the curious lack of monsters. There were plenty still out there, but not nearly as many as there should have been.

Just after Obrahim had given orders meant to manage the army’s recovery, another dense wave of ethera swept across the land. It was more powerful than any that had come before it, and he found himself staring in awe.

“The reclamation of Gorveth is at hand. The gods favor us,” he intoned, eliciting nods from his closest underlings. “We must ensure that they find a united and cleansed world to greet their efforts to lead us back to the World Tree’s embrace.”

With that, Obrahim’s determination to slay the heretics deepened. He was supported by divine providence, and with that, he could not fail.