Shadow Slave

Eventually, they made it to the place where Seishan and her followers had made their base. It was a magnificent building that had been a temple once, but was now turned into a makeshift hospital. The great prayer hall was crowded with innumerable cots and straw mats, all occupied by suffering, mangled people.

This was where the soldiers wounded on the walls were treated — those who were lucky enough to survive, that was, which was uncommon in battles that involved high-ranking Awakened. Although looking at the scene in front of her, Effie was not sure who had really been lucky.

The vast hall was filled with pained cries and quiet groans, scores of men and women praying to the gods and begging the healers and their assistants to be saved. Some were indifferent, having lost all strength and all hope. Some begged to be killed, instead. The floor was covered in red stains, and the air was stifling.

The stench of blood was overwhelming.

An elderly healer bowed respectfully to Effie and studied her broken arm with a concerned expression.

”Again, my lady?”

His voice was almost reproachful.

Effie smiled and glanced away.

Jet was the only one who could seriously threaten Azarax, but Effie was the only one who could block his attacks. The rest were simply not strong enough to withstand them.

This time, too, she had received a blow from the Plague of Steel. Her powerful enchanted shield just barely survived the impact, but her arm — despite layered physical augmentations and the Mason’s Will quietly supporting her — did not, fracturing in several places and turning into a mangled mess.

In fact, her shield arm had not remained whole in any of their clashes against Azarax. It must have been broken ten times over the course of the Nightmare, which did not exactly make the healers happy.

Luckily, Saints healed quite swiftly, and Effie healed far quicker than most.

“It’s nothing. I was already treated on the wall — this is not why we are here.”

The healer lingered for a few seconds, then bowed and stepped back.

Effie, Kai, and Morgan continued forward, stepping over puddles of blood and covering their noses to shield themselves from the stench.

Soon, they entered the inner sanctum of the former temple, which was dedicated to Beast God. That was a space where Seishan dwelled, surrounded by her blood fiends — the people whom she had transformed into powerful aberrants by infusing them with her blood. That was her eerie Transcendent Ability, which had served the city well in the fight against the Steel Horde.

As Effie approached a silk curtain, two pale young women bowed and silently retreated, allowing her to enter.

One would have expected the dwelling of a Song princess to smell better than the blood-soaked hospital beyond, but it was the opposite. An appalling scent — the scent of sickness, which Effie knew too well — hit her nostrils as soon as she pushed the curtain aside, and she could not help but grimace.

Inside, Seishan was seated on a bed of lavish pillows, her silken grey skin glistening with beads of sweat. Her eyes were cloudy, and her clothes were soaked black, viscous liquid — it was her blood, seeping through the pores of her skin and flowing from her eyes.

Hearing someone enter, Seishan raised her head and glanced at Effie silently, her face a harrowing bloody mask.

She remained silent for a few seconds... and then smiled, revealing two rows of pearly white teeth.

”Ah, so you are alive, after all. Welcome.”

Effie scoffed.

”Naturally. Are you alive, though? How do you feel?”

Seishan raised a hand, which was trembling uncontrollably.

“As you can see... not great...”

The current state of the proud princess of Song was the result of the plague — like many other people in the city, Seishan was infected by it, suffering the agony of the vicious symptoms.

Only, unlike everyone else, she had not contracted the plague by accident. Instead, she had infected herself on purpose — that was their countermeasure against the disease that had no cure.

At the moment, within Seishan’s body, the blood she had inherited from Beast God was fighting against the plague engineered by Azarax and his sorcerers, teaching itself how to destroy it.

Once the process was complete and Seishan defeated the plague, her blood could then be used as the foundation for developing the cure, or even to inoculate people directly — that was what Seishan claimed, at least.

It was just that Azarax seemed to have outdone himself with this one — much time had already passed, and her condition was not improving yet.

There was progress, though. The last time Effie visited, Seishan had looked like a corpse... now, she merely looked like someone with one foot in the grave.

That was somewhat of an improvement.

”How long do you think it will take you to overcome this damn plague?”

Grimacing from pain, Seishan drew a slow breath and then answered in a quiet voice:

”Not long... a few weeks, perhaps.”

Effie let out a sigh.

A few weeks was not bad. Azarax did not usually launch direct assaults one after another, and they had just repelled an attack...

So, they had time.

...Or so she thought.

A day later, she and Kai happened to walk past the river and found Morgan standing in the same spot where they had met her before. Only, this time, there was a strange, grim expression on her face.

Effie suddenly felt a bad premonition.

“What is it?”

Instead of answering, Morgan jumped down and knelt in the mud. There, her dagger was still thrust into the soil, glistening dimly in the sunlight.

Only the water was a whole meter lower down the slope than its muddied blade now, for some reason.

With an expression of dark resignation, Morgan glanced toward the distant city wall, where a colossal iron grate rose from the mighty current.

She remained silent for a short while, and then spoke in a somber tone.

“The river... they are diverting the river.”