Chapter 912 — Anomaly
Blade of Dawn · Page 1 of 4
A thick stench of blood poured into his nostrils, and Bishop Fernanco, who had only just stepped into the room, instinctively furrowed his brow, his face taking on a grave expression.
As a regional bishop who had personally taken the field of battle, and who to this day still practiced the creed of the God of War—journeying each year to several dangerous regions to help the local knight orders wipe out magical beasts—he knew that smell all too well.
The two other priests in the room noticed the regional bishop's arrival and at once withdrew silently to one side. Fernanco's gaze passed over them and swept slowly across the rather spacious priests' rest chamber.
The scene within was plain at a glance—beds, tables, chairs and the like all arranged as usual; against the north wall stood a shrine to the God of War; on the floor before the shrine lay a great pool of blood not yet fully congealed, and at the center of that pool, a mass of flesh utterly jumbled together, its original form impossible to discern.
Within that horrifying mass of blood and flesh could be seen many fibrous strands joining one another, as though in the very process of forming some kind of fascia; fine hairs crept out from certain crevices in the flesh, thick and stiff as brambles, and many scraps of clothing, wholly corroded, lay scattered about this dreadful scene of death, flecks of blood spattering the ground within some three meters of the pool.
Even the Bishop of the God of War, long accustomed to scenes of blood and grotesquerie, could not help but feel a genuine horror rise within him at the sight.
"Your Grace Fernanco," said a priest, approaching from the side. "I salute you. May your heart be as steel."
"As steel, my brother," Fernanco said, nodding to the priest, his gaze returning to the scene of death at the center of the room. He asked in a low voice, "When was it discovered?"
"Before dawn. A priest on night patrol first noticed something amiss and raised the alarm."
"And that priest?" Fernanco frowned. "Bring him to me."
"That priest..." An odd look came over the face of the priest beside him. "His condition is somewhat abnormal. We have only just calmed him with a potent spell of mental soothing—I fear he may lose control again, and even attack you."
Fernanco shook his head. "No matter. I too am skilled in mental soothing—bring him."
"Yes, Your Grace."
The priest departed on his errand, and moments later footsteps came from beyond the door, mingled with a terrified, endlessly repeated muttering. Fernanco looked toward the sound and saw two acolytes of the church supporting between them a young man in an ordinary priest's robe as he entered the room. The man's condition made the regional bishop's brow furrow at once—
The poor wretch trembled from head to toe, his face pale as a corpse, fine beads of sweat covering every inch of his skin, a turbid haze shot through with a faint blood-red film over the whites of his eyes. He had plainly lost his right mind; the whole way in he had been muttering under his breath, and only up close could those broken fragments be made out:
"The God of War protects... protects... heart as steel, heart as steel, through a hundred battles undying... the God of War protects... I have converted, I have converted..."
The poor man kept on in this way from first to last, as though entirely unaware of the regional bishop standing before him, until a few seconds later his wandering gaze suddenly caught the scene behind the bishop. That lifeless mass of flesh seemed in an instant to prod the deepest terror in his heart; he let out a scream such as a human voice can scarcely produce, wrenched himself free of the two strong acolytes by main force, and lunged straight at Fernanco, the nearest to him, shrieking in a cracked and frantic voice: "In the name of the God! Exterminate the heretics! In the name of the God—"