anwhile, as Asmodeus moved south through Grigor, confronting the strange cultists, the atmosphere within Baltimore began to deteriorate. The streets beca rowdier, people lingered at night, and notices of missing people increased slowly each day.
"Another one?" Vinea sat with a large book and various posters spread across her small wooden desk, so recent while others were older than a month.
Sat on the bed, Simon wore a ssy cloth tunic and pants, his eyes like a dead fish as he tossed a parchnt with dozens of sheets in front of him. "I’m done! it’s too damn hot!" Before he flopped onto the bed with a pale face, with gaunt cheeks. "How can there be so many issues suddenly?!"
Since the day the knight chased them, he and Paul have been locked in their rooms, only allowed to speak with the Princess, and they are pressured to share everything they have discussed.
Paul’s bald head shone from the candlelight as he sat, writing and drawing various graphs, tables and information about sacred weapons and monsters and which weapons could kill them. "Stop complaining... It’s too hot to listen to you complain."
"Perhaps I wouldn’t be so grumpy if it wasn’t for you, Paul! You’ve been stealing my iced water foir the past hour! Don’t deny it!" Simon growled, lifting his head to look at him.
"Who do you think created that ice, fool!"
The heat that ca suddenly spread through the south like wildfire, too hot to breathe, and the sore, prickly dryness beca sothing that Alan, the prince of Grigor, requested them to look into.
Maybe the demon phisto knew everything, and this was his thod of getting back at them because he brought it up in front of the foreign diplomats, and they couldn’t ignore his order. "Paul, man... brother... I am dying here, please create more ice."
Simon’s earnest plea reached Paul, but the pile of broken runic charms below Paul showed that this wasn’t the first ti he cast the spell, no, if you ignored the icy water spells cast... all the runes were a cooling breeze or Icy torrent.
Paul glanced at Vinea as she read through the notices for missing people, then returned to Simon. "I’m not doing it after this, I need all the mana for my experints." He also wanted to cool down, but the heat and mana regeneration had slowed since the sudden burst of mana that shook the entire continent a few hours ago. "It’s almost like sothing is blocking or absorbing the surrounding mana."
Vinea, their Princess, looked equally bad, her face pale and dripping with sweat; each ti she took a deep breath, her throat released a dry wheeze.
"You’re right Paul... there is sothing foul in the air, not only is it corrupting mana into sothing even a demon like cannot absorb."
She leaned back, her nose trickling with blood due to overwork.
Vinea wanted to return to the north, and sleep in the cool embrace of her husband, Asmodeus, would be able to fix this. She wasn’t sure where to start, and for the past two days, all they could do was hunt petty criminals, all of whom were normal, kind n. Only after the burst of negative aura did they begin to commit cris.
’Does this strange darkness affect humans? Is it contagious, or a one-off infection?’ She wasn’t a talented doctor or mage; the one with such abilities was her little sister, Asmodea, but to call her here from the far north would take weeks and news of similar disturbances reached them in this isolated city.
Sighing, she took another breath, allowing her corrupted mana to flow through her body, healing the damage done to it. "Once we find the source of this disturbance, I’ll kill whoever did it."
"Princes, isn’t it obvious that Alan and that damn phisto are behind this?" Simon lay back, the icy blue light of Paul’s magic creating ice cubes that filled a huge tub in the centre of the room, where water soaked the ground, so chunks the size of a fist, but with each one Paul’s face beca worse, blood vanished from his face as he dropped to his buttocks.
"Damn..."
"Knight Paul, take a break, this is enough. Thanks to your efforts, we’ve got a lot of ice now... we should have a maid fill a bucket and chill the water with half the ice... wash your face and cool yourself off. That’s an order!"
The symptoms of the illness started with extre heat, dehydration and then a person’s eyes would beco pitch black, then for a ti that ranged from five to ten hours, they would commit acts of blasphemy and violence before collapsing and suffering a horrific backlash from the corruption inside them after.
’Damn it... I don’t have the divine power to fix this...’
Each day, the number of people infected increased, starting with two before climbing to seven. Yesterday, there were twenty-four, but the news only arrived at noon after Vinea and Simon spent the entire morning hunting them down.
At first Vinea thought that after the initial attack, which they’d labelled a siezure for now would only happen once... but today they realsied that this was just their convenient desire and the first two suffered a second seizure before every oriface began to leak a black, sticky fluid, not reasonably blood but not water either and then they died.
After that, they found five others in a similar state. "It’s spreading too fast..."
Simon’s head rested on his lap, with an arm over his face as he snored, while Paul was unconscious, and Vinea felt the sa tiredness. The problem for Vinea was that Simon showed early signs of infection, which forced her and Paul to keep him calm and stable; the only way to combat the issue so far was ice... and temperature.
However, as if to spite them, Baltimore was experiencing an extre heatwave due to the southern sandy heat spreading north.
With Simon and Paul exhausted, she took a deep breath, one arm holding herself up as she leaned forward and breathed through her mouth, but even her mouth was dry and rough.
That’s when she saw her reflection... in the mirror, her face looked different.
’Would my darling still call beautiful now?’
A pale, haggard face and... a left eye that was pure black, with a small silver pupil.
It wasn’t just Simon who beca infected, but... Vinea
Vinea didn’t understand the sickness fully, but from the mont she was bitten while trying to help the patient the night before. She started to feel a strange heat growing in her chest. Each ti it flared and grew larger, there was a strange voice... it whispered to her.
’Stop speaking with his voice... my husband wouldn’t ask to do that...’
The voice whispered sweet nothings and told her to unleash her Empress form in the middle of the city and show the inferior humans her power...
To stop herself from following the voice, once every hour, she would stab a small dagger deep into her thigh, the blood pooling from the wound, an almost fatal wound for a normal person... she could feel a small sliver of clarity.
’But...’
Each ti, that clarity grew smaller.
’This eye wont go away anymore...’
In the early stages, she could get rid of it using the dagger, pain and the chill of death, helping to suppress it.
However, Vinea has now reached her limit, and the ti before she went to Berserk could be less than a day. Even the notes she wrote beca twisted and broken...
- Kill everything... he doesn’t love .
- I must find a way to spread this gift...
What she ant to write was different to these ssages.
- I must find a way to help everyone; my beloved is counting on .
- How can I stop this from spreading further?
It was almost as if sothing possessed her and moved on its own.
’I need ice... it’s too hot...’
Vinea stood up and walked toward the bucket, where she scooped out three ice blocks and placed them down her shirt. She tied the lining to form a small pocket. However, when Vinea returned to the chair, the voice in her head whispered again.
’Just a little more... it won’t be a problem if you do just a tiny amount... Just kill one or two, he will forgive you. It’s not your fault.’
The strange sense of pleasure from the voice made her mind begin to falter and beco fuzzy, her vision becoming cloudier. With it, a deep sense of satisfaction and fulfilnt spread through her entire body.
’Just a little...’
"No!"
"Huh? What’s wrong, Princess?" Paul, who was half asleep, had a dark red face from lying his face against the ice for too long... but it was all he could do to remain sane.
Vinea held her face, taking a deep breath as she tried to calm herself down. ’This... this is dangerous... I’m starting to feel crazy.’
The symptoms of the seizures seed to be different from person to person; with so, it was random bursts of violence, while others beca cannibals. But Vinea didn’t desire to eat at; instead, her eyes stared at Paul and Simon with a murderous aura.
’I can just kill them... right?’
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