The trip back into the Lupe camp was uneventful, but nerve-racking. Laurence had faith in his cloak’s capabilities, but being surrounded by thousands of enemies who he was trying to incapacitate was still incredibly tense. In his previous search through the campsite he had not paid enough attention to the locations of their food and water stores. If he had searched for it last time he would have been far less stressed about the situation, but as it stood he needed to do this as quickly as possible.
All over the campsite he could see the repeated shuffling of the Lupe. It was odd to him. Soon enough many of the faces he was walking by would take their final breaths, their internal organs would cease to function and they would fall into a deathlike state. As long as Winoa brought along enough Saints, then a bloodbath would follow. Hundreds of lives snuffed out like a candle in a hurricane.
Unlike last time that Laurence was in the camp, mere hours before, there was minimal presence near the borders of the camp, instead as he got closer to the middle of the tents more and more Lupe seemed to be showing their faces. Something was happening around the six black stone platforms, but Laurence was still too far out to tell what. He crept through the camp, looking inside each tent he passed, until finally he found a tent containing stores of water and food. He was sure this was not the only one in the campsite, as although the tent was long enough to fit a hundred men standing shoulder to shoulder, it would still not house enough of both food and water to feed the army on its own. They would go through all the food within a week at most.
Although this was not nearly the whole deposit, Laurence still took out the vial and put a single drop of the liquid inside each barrel of water. For a moment, a black cloying liquid spread out from the point of impact between the water and the poison. Like tendrils, the liquid spread throughout each barrel, slowly becoming clearer and clearer until finally the water looked no different to how it had been before he had touched it.
If it wasn’t for the Hephaistia clan being destroyed, the Lupe would be able to easily deal with this. Laurence could not help but wonder what other parts of his journey, even up to the point of the Fallen Morning being released, were shaped by the fall of the Hephaistia clan. It had truly changed the entire nature of the worlds within the tower. The scarcity of the devices that the clan used to make made even simple things like water purification devices extremely valuable. Water purification arrays existed, but they were incredibly difficult to keep running for long periods of time. Father did always say to look in the water first if any large group of people ever became infected. I wonder if they will realise it before it’s too late...
He exited the tent and continued to swan through each proceeding tent as the crowd around the crowd around the platforms began to swell. He located a second storage tent and poisoned the wells before twelve people walked out in front of the crowd. Nine figures were cowled, but one was uncovered. It was the Lupe who Laurence had seen in the dark of the middle tent, though then he looked like a madman, almost frothing at the mouth and clawing out his own fur. Now he looked strong, regal, like a leader. It was amazing what a few hours of grooming could do to a person, though Laurence had to wonder if this was the Lupe’s natural state, or the insanity was.
“Brothers and sisters within the pack,” the Lupe began. “We are experiencing a momentous occasion. Tonight... Today... Today we stand firm in the knowledge that no longer will there be nine great clans within the tower. Thanks to my benefactor behind me,” the Lupe swung his arm back and pointed towards the tall, cloaked figure that loomed just behind him before returning to a splitting furor, “We will no longer be bound by by families that are not our own, nor will we beg at the heel of beasts. Yes we took their form, and yes we gained great strength from it, even the ability to climb the tower and bind ourselves to another, greater master”. He stopped, calming himself. “We will be free of these fetters once and for all. My family, we are approaching a time when the name Lupe will be spoken with the reverence it deserves. Bring out the first”.
From behind the Lupe, Laurence saw one of the cowled figures dragged forwards. Their legs were kicked out from beneath them and they were pushed to the ground. Immediately Laurence began recording the situation, but his skin crawled. This was a heinous thing. The cowl was removed by the Lupe leader and the face of a young woman was revealed. She was pretty, but not a face that Laurence recognised. The young woman’s head was hoisted up by her captor, before the Lupe plunged his hand through her spine and tore out a gemstone shaped like a teardrop. Raising the stone into the air, he threw it onto the first platform.
“Absolution! The first to die. The first child to fall! The Book of Life surrenders a tribute to release the morninglight! Let the second come!”
The second figure was forced into the same position as the first, this time the removal of the cowl revealed a teenage boy, slightly older than Laurence but with the same distinctive red hair as Peter. He had that same smug sense of pride that covered his face as Peter had, something that still managed to anger Laurence. However all that pride was nothing to the Lupe. The leader once more plunged his fist through the spine of his captive, pulling out a giant eye covered in arcane runes and sigils. The Mephisto boy’s face had shock written all over it. He had not expected to die there of all places. As giant globs of blood pumped out of the hole in his spine the young man’s body shook its last before he was kicked on top of the body of the girl who died before him.
“Mephisto! The second to die. The second clan to fall in our ploy! The Book of Death surrenders tribute to the release of the morninglight! Let the third come!”
Like the first two, the third, fourth and fifth figures were pushed out in front of the crowd, each one attempting to resist before having their mana reservoir ripped out of their body and dying of blood loss in the growing pile of corpses. The only thing that changed with each death was the platforms that the sacrifices were happening on. After the third sacrifice thin white lines began to be noticeable all over the platforms, and with each further killing the white lines became both more visible and more luminescent. By the time the fifth sacrifice was performed the white lines were like a sun trapped inside the cold black stone. It was blinding to look at, but Laurence did not turn away nor stop his recording of the events.
The sixth figure was brought out onto the stage and his face was revealed like all those before. It took a moment for Laurence to figure out who it was but when he did, he could not help but gasp out. “Trevor!”
The crowd turned and looked at him, immediately revealing him and subjecting him to the attention of every single person in the area. As their attention fell upon him, the runes within the cape desperately tried to keep up the illusion before the very materials that made up the cloak could no longer take the strain and it turned to dust. The Lupe on the stage looked at Laurence for a moment before clapping his hands. “I know you!“ he said, a smile blooming on his wolfish face. “You’re that boy from the fifth floor! My, you’ve grown up. Well I can’t have you disturbing the events that are about to follow so...” he plunged his fist into Trevor’s back like all the others and pulled out his mana reservoir. The hammer was the last touch and as it fell on the sixth platform the entire stage was set ablaze by the light from within the white lines. A thousand feet in the sky a number blazed in the sky. Starting at three-hundred-thousand, the number ticked down second by second.
The Lupe smiled maniacally at Laurence before screaming out “GO MY BRETHREN! HUNT THE CHILD WHO INTRUDED UPON OUR SACRED RITE AND BRING HIS HEART TO ME!”
Immediately Laurence turned and ran off into the quickly approaching night. His mana pumped through his body, galvanising his muscles into their peak states. Each step upon the ground shattered beneath him as his body quickly broke away from the crowd and darted up the side of the valley, out of their sight. Much to his chagrin he could only leave Trevor’s body to the crows.
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