Deus Necros Chapter 357 357: The War Maiden

"Why do they all have to be such perverted psychopaths?" The words escaped like venom squeezed from the fangs of a serpent, each syllable laced with the raw edge of long-standing exasperation. They rang sharply through the marbled corridor, echoing off the tall columns gilded with sun-blessed scripture, drawing montary glances from the attending guards though none dared et her eyes.

A woman of considerable height and commanding presence strode down the center of the hallway, her boots thudding against the pristine floors with practiced fury. Her golden hair flowed behind her like the banner of a war-tempered saint, the hem of her ceremonial robe snapping with every step. Her features, while ethereal and sculpted with the grace of divine birth, were contorted in a scowl that could turn wine to vinegar. Behind her followed three others, won draped in soft clerical whites that shimred like pearl beneath the refracted light of stained glass above. Their hands were clasped together in front of their waists, heads slightly bowed as they followed in silence. None dared interrupt her montum.

"Every ti! Every single ti," the Holy Maiden continued, her voice rising in waves of indignation, "perverts after perverts! Obscene, lust-addled fools! They seek glory like it's a toy they're owed by birthright, without training, without wisdom, without sacrifice. ager power clutched in greasy palms, and they think they can rule over our world? Our sanctity? And who is left to pick up after their tantrums? Us. Always us. Slaves to their delusions."

The echo of her boots matched the pace of her wrath, a rhythm of holy contempt marching down a corridor too pristine to deserve it.

"Holy Maiden," ca a hesitant voice from one of the trailing clerics, a soft-spoken girl whose lips moved with care, "it's probably an effect of the transportation. They all calm down after a while, don't they?"

The Holy Maiden stopped abruptly, a sharp silence falling across the corridor like the lash of a whip. She turned her head slowly, her eyes narrowing as they landed upon the young cleric. Her gaze held the weight of centuries.

"You think they calm down by their own will?" she asked, voice low now, bitter as winter frost. "No. It is us who douse the fla. It is our labor, our restraint, our intervention that chains their impulses. And because of that, because we are forced to pacify them, their will dies. Their heroic spirit decays like spoiled fruit. They beco docile. Ineffective and. Utterly useless. And so, we must summon again. And again. And again." She sighed, the sound hollow, resigned. "Each one worse than the last."

Her steps resud. The other won hurried to follow.

"Not even the won were any less troubleso," she added, her voice colored by a tired sort of disdain. "So were even more insufferable. Flirting with kings, bedding emperors, weaving plots as though this world was a stage for their fantasies. As if they held the power to enchant with re smiles and half-spoken lies. The delusions… oh, the delusions they carry, thinking themselves sirens when they are but painted jesters."

Another cleric, older and quieter until now, offered a gentle murmur. "We don't yet know if the newly summoned soul is the sa, Holy Maiden. Perhaps this one is different."

"Different?" The Holy Maiden let out a soft, humorless laugh. "I have held this title for six centuries. Six long, weary centuries, and I assure you… they are all the sa." Her voice dropped into a growl, bitter and cracked with exhaustion. "Every last one of them."

The procession neared the end of the hallway. Sunlight bled through vast mosaics of saints and sinners, casting shifting pools of colored light across the checkered marble. The air slled faintly of polished incense wood and the lavender oil used by the priests for purification rites. Knights in gold-trimd armor stood vigil along the walls, stoic and silent. Their helms dipped in reverence as she passed, though none dared make a sound. Her presence demanded silence, not from protocol, but from survival instinct.

They reached a massive door, veined with silver and carved with sacred trials of martyrdom and holy ascension. The very threshold exhaled a sense of weight, of divine authority condensed into oak and steel. The Holy Maiden paused before it.

A thunderous voice bood from within, rattling the air like a bell tower at war. "THE HOLY MAIDEN HAS ARRIVED!"

The door groaned as it opened, creaking inward with a reverence that bordered on fear. Light poured from within, not warm sunlight, but the searing, consecrated glow of a hundred soulflas and sacred orbs hovering around the inner sanctum. The space ahead stretched high and wide, the ceiling lost to shadows behind illuminated pillars. It was the heart of the Sacrosanctum, the chamber where mortal n dared play at godhood.

The Pope sat at the far end, enthroned beneath an altar carved of ash and star-stone, surrounded on all sides by bowing devotees, robed clerics, and armored warriors. Rows of paladins knelt in tight formation, heads bowed, prayers murmured like the tides. Every inch of the space thrumd with the tension of ritual and ceremony.

And there, in the center of the room, a man knelt.

He was facing the Pope, one knee to the ground, his fra casting a bloated shadow beneath the holy lights. He wore clothing ill-suited to the world of Ikos: tight, sweat-drenched garnts stretched to their limits over rolls of flesh. His shirt clung to his back as though it were suffocating under the weight of his own perspiration. His hair was short, curled, and matted to his scalp. His skin glistened under the strain of heat and unfamiliarity, as if his very body rebelled against the sacred space he had been summoned into.

Triple chins drooped beneath a pocked, oily face. Pimples like miniature blisters of sha covered his jawline and neck. A pair of thick glasses sat on his nose, their lenses so dense and distorted they magnified his eyes to comical proportions, like the bottom of glass bottles turned into windows.

"Ah, the Holy Maiden has arrived," the Pope said, his voice asured, but not without a note of hesitation. "Sir Hiro."