Interlude: Cullen

“Who’s there?”

Cullen’s shaky voice cracked in the silence of the cold winter’s night, echoing among the dark trees. The half-moon overhead was cloaked by clouds, turning the already shadowy forest into a wall of darkness. His torch felt useless in his hand, the fire’s light barely penetrating the murk. He stared, wild-eyed into blackness, straining to find the source of the odd sound he swore he had heard a moment before.

“It’s just me, you bed wetter.”

Cullen stifled a scream as a gruff man’s voice spoke from mere inches behind him. Whirling around, he looked up to see Garth’s taunting smirk.

“Need to change your pants?”

“No!” Cullen snapped at the older man. Gulping audibly, he did his best to put aside his fears and meet the guardsman with shoulders squared. “What are you doing sneaking around the camp at night?”

“I’m not sneaking, boy,” Garth grunted as he shoved Cullen to one side. “I’m taking up my post. Your ears must be filled with ice. Stanner rang the bell ten minutes ago.”

“Oh,” Cullen deflated slightly at the guard’s words. “I—I didn’t hear. But I think I heard something coming from the trees on the other side of the road! There might be bandits, or something worse skulking about in the woods and I—”

“Ears too dull to hear the dinner bell but you think you’re hearing stalkers in the dark? That makes a lot of sense.”

“But I—”

“No bandits are going to be on this road,” Garth talked over the younger man with a dismissive sneer, completely ignoring their difference in rank. “We’re still in the heartlands of the empire. It’ll be days before we get far enough from the routes of regular patrols before any sane bandits will be brave enough to risk an attack on a caravan. Why else would the captain let a little milk sucker like you stand watch? You haven’t even unlocked your class yet.”

“But it might be something worse than bandits!” Cullen persisted. “What if there are Demons—”

“Demons!” Garth guffawed as he leaned heavily on his spear. “Around here? You really are a sop, aren’t you?”

“Well it’s poss—”

“As possible as me waking up to a fine woman sucking my toes in the morning. Now give me that torch and get going. I don’t need to hear another lecture from that mam of yours about us coarse folk corrupting your noble virtue. Get.”

Reluctantly passing the sputtering torch to the gruff man, Cullen quickly wrapped his arms around himself and started the short walk towards the center of the camp. He regretted offering to take up a watch with the guards. He had hoped it would earn him a little bit of respect from the rough soldiers, but all it had gotten him so far were cold feet and frayed nerves. He should have listened to his mother and just kept to his studies. It wasn’t as though he wanted to unlock a guard or soldier class anyway. He would be a mage, just like his mother and every other scion of the family. Just… a little respect would have been nice.

Frowning at the waste of time as well as the thought of the tedious arithmetic book he had waiting for him back at the travel wagon he shared with his mother, Cullen glanced over his shoulder once last time to shoot a glare at Garth. He had hoped that the rude man would be looking away from him so that he could make a crude gesture at the guard’s back. Cullen’s mother would never have permitted such a crass insult, and he would never use it on Garth or anyone else, so long as they could witness it. But a little unseen disrespect would make him feel a little better.

What Cullen saw when he looked back was not Garth, but instead an empty space. The guardsman was gone.

He froze, half turned around as he stared disbelieving at the dark emptiness. Cullen could see Garth’s spear still stuck in the frozen ground by the road. The torch lay next to it, half extinguished by the snow. But of the man himself, there was no sign.

“Garth?” Cullen called out, his voice shaking as an uncontrollable shiver ran through him. “Garth? Where are you? I’m not going to soil my pants just because you hid behind a tree! Stop being a—a jackanape and come out!”

The only response to his quavering shout was the creak of the trees in the winter wind.

“Garth?”

Cullen’s voice dropped in volume as it went up in pitch. His wide-eyed gaze raked across the empty road and the forest beyond.

“I’m going now,” he announced to the darkness. “And I’m going to tell the caravan master that you’re shirking your duties!”

Turning once more towards the light of the camp, Cullen tried his best to ignore the fear prickling his back as he headed at a purposefully measured pace towards the wagons. There was no reason to rush. In fact, there was a good reason not to. He needed to uphold his dignity, after all. Garth was just trying to scare him and Cullen wasn’t going to let the man get to him. In fact, he wouldn’t even tell his mother about this little farce. It wasn’t worth the trouble. No, he would just go get his dinner and—

A blur of red slammed into the ground a few feet from Cullen’s left side. Letting out a shriek of terror, the young man whirled to see what had fallen into the snow. Once his brain processed what the object was, he nearly vomited what little he had in his stomach.

Garth lay there, his arms and legs gone. All that was left was a head attached to a bloody torso.

“Guh… Ge…et… he—help…” Garth gurgled around his broken jaw.

Paralyzed with fear, Cullen stared at the maimed man, disbelief warring with his terror. What help? What could he do to help? What could anyone do to help the man? What in all of the gods’ names had done this to—

Several drops of red blood splattered across the white snow a small distance from where Garth lay dying. Slowly raising his gaze to where they had come from, Cullen spotted the source. He never even noticed as the wet warmth of his spilled bladder trickled down his leg.

The Demon was huge. Its long, thick body was covered in arms and legs, many of them human, some of them animal. There was even a white wing jutting out from one side of the abomination. Near its head, Cullen could see it pressing one of Garth’s stolen arms into its gray flesh, binding the man’s limb to it. As it attached its grisly prize, it opened its vertically split mouth, twisting towards Cullen so that a child’s face inside of the Demon’s mouth could open its own small mouth and meet his terrified gaze with a single, bright blue eye.

“Mother!”

Cullen’s screams felt distant in his own ears as he ran as fast as he could from the horror. Or were those the screams of the others in the camp he was hearing mixed with his own? It was impossible to tell the difference and he had no mind to try. Cullen felt the sting of the frozen ground on his hands and knees as he fell, slipping on the snow and ice in his mad dash. He scrambled forward on all fours, desperate to get away as quickly as he could from what he knew was certain death.

A heavy object thumped to the ground in front of Cullen and he was forced to slide to a stop. The thing was Karl, or at least a part of him. The wagon driver had been torn in half, his bowels spilling out of his remaining body like steaming meat from a pie. Cullen vomited uncontrollably at the sight, bile stinging his lips as he flailed and struggled to get to his feet.

Stunned by what was happening, Cullen sat helplessly, his head twisting from left to right as he watched more of the men and women who had moments before been members of the caravan fall to the ground as brutalized corpses. Spells were flying through the night air, horrible bolts of malformed power that tore through guards and workers alike. The attacks came from all around the camp, from the dark, where shadows reigned. There was no defense, none at all, except—

“Cullen!”

“Mother!” Cullen instinctively responded as he heard his mother call for him.

Dashing with all the speed his shaky legs could muster, Cullen raced for the center of the camp. There, he saw his only salvation. His mother.

Leonore stood tall, one hand raised high with an eleria-studded pendant pointing towards the sky. A flowing shield of water had encircled her in a twenty-foot radius, protecting all who had taken shelter within from the attack. Rushing forward, the water parted to allow him entrance, closing like a curtain behind him. Cullen collapsed at his mother’s feet, panting so hard he felt as though his ribs were going to crack with each breath.

“Stay down, Cullen,” Leonore spoke firmly, her stern face set in a hard expression. “Everything will be fine. We can handle this.”

Daring to look up from the snow, Cullen turned his gaze to where his mother was looking. The guards she had brought with them on their trip weren’t the low-level army rejects that had been tasked with guarding the rest of the caravan. These men had served their family for generations. They had the training and the experience to handle themselves against real enemies, not just starving bandits. The six men had taken up position in a line around the one side of the water shield and had their halberds ready to attack. They weren’t going to foolishly rush out of the defensive barrier, though. They were better trained than that. They would stay there, within Leonore’s powerful shield, ready and waiting for the assailants in the dark to show themselves. The Demons had to run out of magic eventually. Then they would attack directly and be cut to pieces by the strong men.

Glancing around, Cullen saw the fear, but also the hope on the faces of the servants and passengers who had managed to get within the safety of Leonore’s spell. She was a powerful sorcerer, empowered further by the wealth of enchanted items she had on her person. Her magic reserves were as deep as a well. She could outlast the attackers. They were right to have hope. She could save them.

“Yes, mother,” Cullen said as he shakily got to his feet. “You can handle them. That’s why you have to die first.”

“What—?” Leonore’s confusion turned to pained shock as Cullen plunged the cursed dagger into her throat.

Instantly the water shield fell away as Leonore grabbed at the gapping wound Cullen had made in her neck. Choking on her own blood, the sorceress collapsed to her knees, one hand around her ruined windpipe and the other grasping at Cullen’s wet coat. The look in her eyes was indescribable as she saw her own son’s face smile sweetly as he watched her bleed on his shoes.

Some of the soldiers who had been facing the dark turned around when the spell fell to see what had happened. That had been a mistake. In the next instant, the Greater Demon was upon them, tearing through their armor, ripping their limbs off and discarding what was left to die ingloriously, forgotten. A few tried to fight, but without Leonore and her shield, they were easy prey. Some of those frightened servants who had only moments before dared to hope tried to flee but were cut down before they could run more than a handful of yards.

Leonore, now as pale as the snow around her, limply struggled to speak. Her mouth moved, but no sound could come out as her voice had been stolen from her by the violence of Cullen’s blade in her throat. Leaning forward, Cullen shushed the dying woman before placing a gentle kiss on her forehead.

“Hush, mother. No need to fret. You go to sleep now. It’ll all be over in a moment.”

Just as Cullen had predicted, it only took a few seconds longer before the choking sound faded and all movement stilled. Leonore slumped, lifeless, her terrified eyes turned upward, forever frozen with the sight of her son’s betrayal in them.

“And… Scene!”

Cullen clapped his hands together once with a loud crack that echoed in the night air. Letting out a satisfied sigh, he shed the soiled cloak he had taken from the boy’s body and let it drop on the ground. He personally hated coats with such high collars. An ugly fashion in his opinion, but for some reason the youth of the day had taken to them.

“Sir, all the perimeter guards have been accounted for,” one of the cultists reported as he stalked out of the shadows. “No one has escaped.”

“Excellent,” Cullen nodded at the man. “Though I note that not all have yet died, have they. There is at least one mouse hiding inside that wagon over there,” he pointed at the wagon next to the one Leonore and her son had been using. “I saw her pop inside while everyone else was running. Make sure you check all of the wagons for anyone else who might be trying to lay low.”

“Yes, sir,” the man nodded.

Cullen couldn’t remember the man’s name at the moment, but that was fine. He wasn’t important enough to have a name. He was just one of the cultists who was there to aid him in his performance. If he needed a name in the future, Cullen would give one to him. Until then, nameless cultist number four would do. The man was competent in his role, so it wasn’t as though Cullen needed to worry overmuch about having to repeat his stage directions. The man just wasn’t interesting enough to spend any more time wasting thought on. There were others who were more worthy of the effort.

“Ah, my beautiful Desire,” Cullen smiled as he turned to see the Demon approach him. “What an excellent performance you put on today! I was chilled to the bone! The terror you can induce is awe inspiring!”

The Demon did not outwardly respond. Instead, it simply stood there, hanging halfway over the top of a wagon as its long body reached out towards him. Its jaws were open and its great blue eye was watching him, which sent a shiver of pleasure through Cullen. Such an eye it was. Oh, to be seen by such an eye…

Shaking himself free of his idle thoughts, Cullen motioned towards the body of the sorceress at his feet.

“Go ahead, you may have her. I’m going to keep this little charm for myself,” he said as he jingled the pendant he had slipped from the woman’s hand before the Demon. “But everything else is yours. Just remember to leave the animals alone! We need them alive, for the moment.”

Desire made a clicking sound with its jaws that Cullen knew by then meant that the Demon understood. As the beautiful beast went about taking the parts of flesh and bone that it wanted from the corpse, Cullen reflected on the wonder that was Twisted Desire. It truly was a marvel. Having a Demon that was so intelligently cooperative made his goals so much more achievable. If all the Demons he had to work with had been like Desire, he might have been able to put on a far better performance than he had that night in Eldingholt.

Eldingholt. The thought of the wretched city soured Cullen’s good mood. That was supposed to have been his masterpiece. The stage had been set for an epic, one that would have been told for ages to come. Instead, things had not gone to plan. Yes, his patron had made demands that he couldn’t ignore and the schedule had been accelerated, but it should have been manageable. He should have still been able to pull off the performance the way he had envisioned. But no. So much had gone wrong that night thanks to that… interloper and her improvisation.

“Sir, we’ve checked the wagons.”

Cullen blinked, realizing that he had been lost in thought for too long. Glancing up, he saw that one of the other nameless members of his cast had approached him. The woman was too plain to play the role of a seductress and she was too small and thin to take on the part of a fierce warrior. But she had a good, smoky kind of voice. There was potential there. Maybe that was something he could work with in the future, to give her a better role?

“And?”

“Just the one woman,” nameless cultist number six reported. “She appears to be a merchant. She likely owns the wagon we found her in.”

“Hm. That should make her Liane, I believe. Drug her and keep her alive, for now. I may have a use for her.”

“Yes, sir,” the woman nodded.

“Spread the word to the others. Bury whatever is left of the bodies after our friend has taken what it desires from them. Make sure to turn the snow and leave no trace of blood. We will set out on the road west in two hours.”

“Yes, sir,” she acknowledged his orders and turned to leave, but hesitated for a moment. “Sir? Will we be using this caravan as a cover for the whole trip? I don’t think we have the numbers to fake the guards.”

“That depends,” Cullen smiled at the woman. He didn’t mind when performers asked questions, so long as it was to better understand their role. “I have friends waiting for us in Leath. We may be able to continue the ruse with their addition, or we may switch out for a different role. It truly depends on our foil and how quickly he catches up with us.”

“Foil?”

“The Hero, of course,” Cullen frowned at the cultist. He had thought her mind was sharp, but perhaps she wasn’t as keen as he had hoped. “Who else? We must be prepared for the next time we meet him. We have a long, long way to go before our performances are complete!”

“…Yes, sir,” the dull woman nodded before turning away to go about completing his orders.

Cullen shook his head at her back. So few of the cast had the brainpower to properly understand their roles. That was fine, though. They didn’t need to comprehend the bigger picture, just so long as they performed their parts.

“At least you understand, don’t you, Desire?”

Cullen affectionately ran his hand over the Demon’s head as it continued to add more limbs to its body. Desire didn’t have any means of doing so, but he liked to think that it was purring like a kitten in appreciation of his attention.

“Now then,” Not-Cullen said as he tore off the rest of the clothing he had been wearing during the show and began searching through the luggage of another wagon. “What role shall I play next?”

Source: Webnovel.com, updated by NovelKeep