Penitent Book 3 Ch 4: Diligent Rites

Michael watched as the fireball Ollie threw smashed into the center of the lizardfolk. When it exploded, there was a brief flash of light, and they were evaporated. Not just burnt to a crisp, but completely removed from existence. Michael healed his eyes to clear the damage the flash of the explosion had done and charged into the midst of the distracted monsters. The lizards and their magic wouldn’t be a problem thanks to Ollie, but most of the horned men were still alive, though disoriented.

“I will cleanse this village in the name of Bruntus!” he roared as he raised his mace and divine flame enveloped it. He no longer needed to dedicate his actions explicitly to the gods, but in this case he felt it was important that he made an exception. He reached the first of the horned men before he was able to get back onto his feet and ran him through, shifting his mace into a sword as he stabbed at him.

Another of them ignored the weapon at his side and attempted to ram Michael with his horns, but Michael caught the blow on his shield before shifting his sword into a mace and smashing it into the beast’s thick skull. The blow wouldn’t kill it, but the holy fire that came with it would.

A third pointed at Michael with his spear. “Aur-ma! Aick na fu!”

“Fuck you too, buddy,” cried Ollie from the roof making a chopping motion with his staff that sent down a cutting spell that removed the horned one’s arm at the elbow.

Michael ignored the one that lost its arm to catch a sword blow from another on his shield and deflect a separate spear blow with a parry of his mace. He channeled the pain of the literally disarmed monster into the spearman causing him to clutch his arm in pain. While the spearman was distracted, he turned his full attention to the one with the cleaver and slid his flaming sword between his ribs before twisting around to cut down the spearman before he could recover. When he was done with them he turned to deal with the remaining spearman, but found that he was already dead.

One was attempting to flee, yelling “Aur-ma!” As he ran, but before he could reach the treeline Ollie pointed his staff and a bolt of lightning flew from it and struck the beast in the back causing his body to launch forward into a tree and crumple into a singed wreck.

Michael took an extra moment to check his surroundings, and when he saw that no enemies were left he let the fire on his blade fade and shifted it back into a mace which he buckled back onto his waist.

Ollie jumped and gently floated down to the ground. He shook his head. “Not quite what I was hoping for when Pyotr described it.”

“Let’s check the buildings. I want to make sure that they don’t have anyone trapped and alive here.”

Ollie nodded and they began going from building to building. They carefully checked corners and kept their eyes and ears open for a potential ambush, but none came. They also found no one alive in any of the houses, though they did find several dead.

Once they were sure there was no else alive Michael moved to the still burning corpse on a spit and started to kick dirt onto the fire before Ollie raised a hand and whispered something causing it to extinguish.

“Thanks,” said Michael as he carefully removed the body from the spit and placed it on the ground. He burnt himself doing it, but healed it after the body was down. He couldn’t bear the sight of it on the spit and refused to wait for it to cool. After that one was retrieved he began walking to another corpse and dragging it over to place beside the other one.

Ollie caught onto what he was doing quickly and began to help. He used his magic to make the bodies float gently over to where he could lay them down. When he was done with all the bodies outside, Michael went into the buildings and homes to grab the bodies he’d found within them as well. Once they were all laid out next to one another he counted only eleven.

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“That’s not nearly all of them. There were more than fifty people here last time.”

“Do you think they got taken?” asked Ollie.

Michael looked at all of the horned men and lizardfolk corpses and shook his head. “No. If I had to guess they evacuated. Most of them probably got away and these that we’re seeing held them off so that they could get away. They worshipped the Lord of Diligence after all. They were definitely prepared for this kind of thing.”

“That makes sense given all the traps.” He paused for a moment. “Should we see if they left anything valuable behind?”