The ruins of Seth Town after the great fire were a shocking sight.
Charred walls and broken rubble, the acrid stench of burnt flesh still hanging in the air, and everywhere the grotesque, twisted corpses. They looked as though they had tried to flee when the flames devoured everything, but for some reason could not escape, forced instead to watch themselves burn alive.
It was nothing less than a vision of hell.
Though the fire had been extinguished, the air around Seth Town still seethed with heat. Heavy steam drifted in the atmosphere, laced with the scent of protein seared to ash.
From time to time, wood and stone cracked and fell with sudden snaps, sounds that set one's nerves on edge.
This was Maria's first impression as she rode closer on her blessed mount, vivid and visceral. Though it still bore faint traces of the prosperous and peaceful town from her memories, something essential had been utterly changed. Her heightened Perception warned her clearly: even after being scoured by fire, this place was far from safe.
The temporary camp of the Paladins of the Sun had been set up near the town gates.
Squads of Paladins and Pastors patrolled in shifts around the ruins. Many looked grim, some were vomiting violently.
As Maria slowed her horse and entered the camp, she witnessed a striking scene.
A Flame Priest was personally tending to a wounded Paladin.
The warrior's right hand was half-charred and bloody, the wound sprouting grotesque, writhing meat-buds. These unnatural growths, clearly alien to the human body, clawed and gnawed at the Paladin's arm as if to consume it whole.
Words could not describe the torment. The Paladin sweated profusely, his body twitching in spasms, a picture of pain and itching beyond endurance. Maria could tell: if not for the pure transcendent lifeforce in his body, those buds would have been far more than just growths.
"My gods… what is this?"
The Flame Priest's brow furrowed. He had never seen such evil power before, a force steeped in malice toward life itself, yet at the same time brimming with a perverse, vigorous vitality. Even brushing against it left his body crawling with cold dread.
"What is it?" he demanded of Maria, who had just arrived.
"A very terrible power," Maria answered curtly. She did not elaborate. The fire had not completely purified Seth Town, Corrupted still lingered, clinging to life amid the wreckage with unnatural resilience.
Her answer did not satisfy the Flame Priest. He stared into Maria's crimson eyes, searching them for some hidden truth. His heart trembled, because in some way, this profane vitality seemed even more potent, more overflowing, than the lifeforce of the true gods themselves…
"But in all recorded knowledge, I have never seen corruption such as this," he murmured, unsettled. "It belongs to no Evil God. I ran two rounds of nature detection, the results came back only as Chaos and Evil."
The realization shook him. A blasphemous thought whispered at the edges of his mind: could the power of false gods and abominations truly surpass that of the divine?
"Where is Gehrman?" Maria asked suddenly, noticing his absence.
"He's inside with a squad of Paladins… cleaning…" The Flame Priest's face twitched, as if unable to find words for the warped creatures within. "Sister Maria, what do you advise? To tell the truth, I regret extinguishing the flames. If the fire had burned longer, perhaps those blasphemous lives would all have been purged."
"When do the other divine officers of Purification arrive?"
"Soon."
Realizing the nature of the power behind Seth Town's disaster, the Flame Priest had immediately contacted the Luminous Cathedral of Torrent City, one of the eleven Pillars of the Radiant Church. As a direct subordinate of Archbishop Mark, he had emphasized the gravity of the situation. The Cathedral responded by mobilizing large-scale teleportation miracles, dispatching several Silver-ranked divine officers to provide support.
Maria soon understood what "soon" meant.
At coordinates marked by priests across Seth Town, beams of radiant golden light tore through the clouds and thundered down from the sky, blazing as if the heavens themselves had descended. Within each beam stood figures like divine warriors come to mete out judgment, their bodies cloaked in blinding gold, as if armored in the blessing of the Sun itself.
At their head strode a warrior in black-and-red iron plate, carrying a steel-forged Holy Tome. She murmured words of holy censure as she walked, each step radiating waves of iron strength. Her black eyes narrowed sharply at the sight of Seth's desecrated ruins.
"What vile corruption!"
It was Sister Dolores, the Steel Nun. Her voice burned with wrath, like a raging flame. The taint lingering in Seth filled her with righteous fury, she swore by justice that she would scour this blighted place clean.
The Silver-ranked had arrived: Sister Dolores, along with two squads of the devout Paladins, whose faith allowed them to summon celestial steeds. With them were four more Flame Priests, the spear of Purification and Judgment.
All had been sent under Archbishop Mark's direct command, to aid Flame Priest Brown, the first to arrive, in eradicating Seth Town's disaster.
"May these poor souls find peace," one of the priests prayed as he gazed upon the charred ruins. He had been briefed on the situation beforehand, but even imagining thousands burned alive was a horror beyond words, hell itself, rivaling the massacres of barbarian sackings.
Meanwhile, within the ruins of Seth…
Moving with the silent prowl of a cat, Gehrman crept through the debris. Suddenly he froze, peering from behind a shattered wall toward the town's central square.
There should have been a fountain.
Instead…
A grotesque thing writhed in its place, a mass of pulsing flesh spewing scorched blood-clots in all directions. Around it prowled half-charred Corrupted, circling the abomination. Their survival of the fire was no accident, clearly, they were bound to this obscene fountain-thing.
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