The cultist's body went rigid. His eyes bulged as his pupils dilated.
"Get out! What did you do to me?!"
He thrashed against the restraints. The legs of the chair scraped loudly across the concrete as he tried to escape something he couldn't see.
Lucien kept the wand steady and maintained his focus on the Legilimency Spell. The prisoner's reaction matched the descriptions in the textbooks. The spell created the sensation of a foreign presence digging through a person's thoughts, like fingers rummaging through filing cabinets.
That meant the spell was working, sort of...
The problem was that he couldn't see a bloody thing.
This was bollocks.
He lowered the wand. The spell was clearly doing something. But if the caster couldn't access the target's mind, what was the point?
It was like having a telephone that rang but never connected the call.
"Alright," he said quietly. "New approach."
He set down the wand and picked up a pair of pliers from his toolkit.
"No, wait... I was telling the truth! I swear!"
"I know you were." Lucien tested the pliers, opening and closing them. "But you took too long to answer. I am not happy about that."
"What? That's insane! You can't..."
The scream that followed was animal.
Lucien applied pressure to specific nerve clusters in the hand. When he finally stopped, the cultist was sobbing.
"Devil," he gasped out between broken breaths. "You're a devil."
Lucien didn't respond. He was too busy thinking.
The cultist had broken relatively quickly compared to the others, which suggested he was an opportunist rather than a true believer. He had been using the same survival tactics here that had probably served him well before the world ended.
Those tactics didn't work on Lucien. Because he didn't want anything from him except information, and he would get that information regardless of whether the cultist cooperated willingly or screamed it out between applications of pain.
The realization seemed to hit the cultist all at once. His eyes went wide.
"You're going to kill me."
"Eventually," Lucien agreed. "But first, we're going to verify some information."
The cultist started struggling again, jerking against the ropes. "The Shepherd will purify you! You will burn in—"
"One more test, then we are done." Lucien cut him off.
He raised the wand again, drawing on reserves that felt dangerously low. The headache was getting worse. His hands had started trembling from magical exhaustion about twenty minutes ago, and he was fairly certain he had pulled something in his back from hauling dead weight around.
But he needed to try this.
He focused everything he had left into the spell.
"Obliviate!"
An invisible force slammed into the cultist. The entire chair lifted off the ground, flipped backwards, and crashed down with the prisoner's skull taking the brunt of the impact against concrete.
CRACK.
Lucien blinked. "What?"
He stared at his wand, then at the unconscious cultist, then back at his wand.
That had been a Memory Charm designed to erase or modify memories. It wasn't supposed to throw people across rooms like they had been hit by a Bludger.
Had he mispronounced something?
He walked over to the cultist and checked for a pulse. Still alive, just unconscious. There was blood pooling under his head from where it had hit the floor, but the skull seemed intact.
He kicked him.
The cultist's eyes fluttered open.
"What is your name?" Lucien asked.
The man stared up at him blankly. "...What?"
"Who am I?"
"...Who?"
Lucien crouched down, studying the cultist's expression. The vacancy in his eyes could mean the Memory Charm had worked. Or it could mean he had just suffered a traumatic brain injury from having his head slammed into concrete at high velocity.
There was no way to tell which.
After everything, he had finally managed to get something resembling a successful spell cast. And he had no idea if it worked or if he had just bludgeoned a man's brain into mush through blunt force trauma.
The other prisoners hadn't responded this way to the Memory Charm. They had either shown no reaction at all or screamed about demons, same as they did with every other spell. Only this one had "lost his memory," and Lucien couldn't determine whether that was magic or just brain damage.
The cultist was still staring vacantly at nothing, drool running down his chin.
Lucien picked up his wand one more time. He pointed it at the man's chest, took a breath, and spoke the words he had been avoiding all night.
"Avada Kedavra."
Nothing happened.
He sighed, put the wand away, and picked up the steel spike.
Then he drove it quickly between the man's ribs. The cultist never even understood what was happening before the light faded from his eyes.
He stood there for a moment, looking down at the body.
He should feel something, probably. Guilt, maybe. Or horror at what he had become.
Instead, he mostly felt tired. And annoyed that advanced magic apparently required more than just knowing the words and wand movements.
He left the storage room without looking back.
---
The factory floor was busier than usual.
Miranda kept her head down. The other women were preparing dinner. She had been here less than a day, but the pattern was already clear. New arrivals were separated, isolated, and bombarded with doctrine until they either broke or pretended to break. The smart ones pretended quickly. The stubborn ones disappeared into "private counseling" with the Shepherd and came back different.
If they came back at all.
An older woman intercepted her near the sleeping quarters.
"New girl!" The woman pushed past Miranda into the small space that passed for her assigned sleeping area. "Random inspection. The Shepherd demands purity in all things."
Miranda watched as the woman began rifling through her belongings.
It didn't take long.
"Aha!" The woman pulled several cans from beneath the cot where Miranda had hidden them. "Food hoarding! Do you know what the punishment for this is?"
"No! Please, I wasn't... those cans looked old. I thought they might be expired, and make people sick. I was going to ask someone what to do with them, but I didn't know who to..."
"This is the apocalypse, girl. We eat what the Lord provides. Expiration dates are a luxury we can no longer afford."
She started shoving the cans into her own pockets.
"But since you're new... I will overlook this transgression."
She patted her bulging pockets. "These, however, are confiscated. The warriors do the Lord's work and deserve proper nutrition."
"Thank you. I... thank you for being merciful."
The woman seemed satisfied. She swept out of the room, already planning how she would present her "discovery" to earn favor with the leadership.
Miranda waited until the footsteps faded completely before allowing her expression to reset to neutral.
The cans had been prepared before she ever left the nursing home. Lucien had used a syringe to inject something into each one. According to him, the contents wouldn't kill anyone. They would just cause severe disorientation, hallucinations, and maybe some vomiting.
It was enough to create chaos.
And the beauty of it was that the cultists would never suspect unopened cans brought by a new recruit. Those were the safest possible option in their eyes.
The old woman would almost certainly give them to the guards or the Shepherd's inner circle.
Miranda closed her eyes and ran through the timeline in her head. Assuming the cans were eaten tonight, symptoms would start manifesting within a few hours. By midnight, maybe sooner, things would get interesting.
She just had to stay unnoticed until then.
---
The Shepherd's private quarters were nothing like the rest of the compound.
While the prisoners rotted in filthy cells and the new converts slept on thin cots in communal halls, this room had carpet.
The Shepherd sat at the head of the table, cutting into what looked like roasted meat.
A guard stood nearby, hands clasped behind his back.
"The meal is excellent," the Shepherd said, dabbing his mouth with a cloth napkin. "The new arrivals have some useful skills. They will make fine additions once they have been properly guided."
"Yes, sir."
The Shepherd set down his fork and knife, aligning them precisely on the plate. "Did you deliver my message to the prisoner called Merle?"
"Yes, sir. He was resistant at first. But after we explained the situation regarding his brother, he became much more cooperative."
"Good." The Shepherd's expression remained pleasant. "This group is different from the others we have encountered."
He picked up his wine glass and took a sip.
"The officer has strong willpower. Merle is unstable but potentially useful if properly controlled. Even the children show a concerning level of competence."
The guard shifted slightly. "Should we expedite the purification process?"
"No." The Shepherd shook his head. "Rushing would be counterproductive. But maintain increased surveillance. Until they are fully integrated, I want no surprises."
"Understood."
The Shepherd returned to his meal, and the guard remained standing in silence.
---
The sun was setting.
Long shadows stretched across the compound as the last of the daylight bled out of the sky. The temperature was dropping fast.
A guard yawned as he made his way toward the perimeter checkpoint, rifle slung over one shoulder. He felt good. Dinner had been amazing. He had eaten the whole thing himself, savoring every bite.
His head felt a bit fuzzy now, but that was probably just the booze. Someone had broken out a bottle earlier, celebrating something. He couldn't quite remember what.
"Hey!" he called out toward the checkpoint booth. "Frank! You sleeping on duty again?"
No response.
The guard frowned and picked up his pace. Frank was a slacker, sure, but he usually at least pretended to be awake when someone showed up for shift change.
He stepped into the shadow cast by the booth and immediately kicked something soft.
His boot had caught on fabric. He looked down, squinting in the fading light.
Frank was on the ground.
The guard's brain tried to process what he was seeing, but everything felt slow and disconnected.
Frank wasn't moving. His eyes were open. And there was a hole in his forehead. Blood had pooled beneath his head, already starting to congeal in the cooling air.
"Wha... what the..."
The guard stumbled backward, his shoulder striking the metal frame of the booth. His hands trembled as he tried to raise his rifle, but the weapon suddenly felt far too heavy. The world around him seemed to tilt.
He fumbled for his flashlight and switched it on.
The beam swept slowly across the booth's wall.
A message was written there in blood.
JUDGMENT HAS COME.