CHAPTER 241: REBELLION

Ordias stood silently, chewing his lip. He looked at the still, motionless creature before him. Just from watching it tear through the elves, he knew he wouldn’t do well against this thing. If it came down to it, it would rip him apart from balls to brain. Ordias was powerful, probably one of the best fighters in the Empire, but against something like this? He’d be butchered like a common farmer.

He recognised those weapons; he used to be an elf, after all. Those were some of the best elf equipment, and he had seen some of his own soldiers’ attacks bounce off the elf shields. This Crownless creature just carved through their shields like they were made of paper.

Ordias sighed as he stared at this thing, it didn’t even listen to orders last time, what was he supposed to do with it?

He hadn’t even deployed her properly. One minute she was standing by, the next she was gone. No signal, no confirmation. She just moved. By the time he noticed, she was already cutting through the flank.

He had planned to send her in anyway, but the way she jumped the chain of command didn’t sit right. Not just because it was insubordination, because it didn’t even seem like she understood what a chain of command was.

He’d dealt with hive units before. Even the weird ones usually recognised authority or at least understood it as a vague concept, like that odd Ego entity. This one didn’t. It was like talking to a closed door.

The shot he fired at her head wasn’t meant to kill. He didn’t think it would. He just needed her to stop. She did. Dropped the elf and went still. But he had no illusion that she stopped for him. She didn’t answer to him not really…

Ordias scratched his chin, still staring. She hadn’t moved since. Just standing there, quiet, soaked in blood that wasn’t hers.

He didn’t even know if she was waiting. She might just be off until the next trigger.

Or maybe she was listening to something he couldn’t hear.

"Still think this was a good idea?" he muttered, mostly to himself, not that it mattered. The thing wasn’t going anywhere.

Ordias grimaced, he was hoping for a weapon that could break the deadlock, but he was at least hoping for a weapon he could control. This wasn’t that.

He quietly noted that a pistol shot was hardly a method of command. It had worked once, but that wasn’t control.

The Beast called it a test unit. He hadn’t been told what the test was.

His eyes drifted back to the treeline where Minuvae had vanished. She would talk. Her people would carry the story. Maybe that was what the Beast wanted.

It would be useful. Crownless had made an impression. If Ordias wanted to be cruel, he could just send her into the forest for a week and reopen negotiations.

She’d butcher half a dozen settlements before the week was up.

Whole camps gone. No survivors. No trail. Just torn bodies and wreckage scattered through the trees. Enough of those, and even the most stubborn elf would come to the table.

But it would be hard to walk back from. Too much damage, and there’d be no one left worth talking to, and they’d know who unleashed her.

Ordias sensed a changed and he glanced over and saw a Hive Adjutant standing nearby, wearing the same shit-eating grin the Great Beast always wore. That tone, that smirk, it wasn’t the Adjutant. The Beast had taken over a body again.

Ordias gave him a long, flat look.

“You could’ve mentioned it was going to move without orders,” he said.

The Adjutant shrugged in an uncannily humanlike fashion. “She moved when it made sense. I don’t micromanage. Hey, I am the very supportive boss. I don’t micromanage.”

Ordias didn’t answer. He wasn’t sure if it would’ve made a difference anyway.

The Great Beast stepped a little closer, “She performed beautifully, didn’t she? Not bad for a first run. No friendly fire, that was a surprise!”

Ordias didn’t respond.

“No friendly fire?” Ordias replied in a slightly clipped tone.

“Well I wasn’t sure you know.” the Great Beast said with a casual wave of its borrowed hand.

The Great Beast kept going. “You didn’t have to shoot her, by the way. She wasn’t going to kill the girl. Just wanted a better look. Field data.”

Ordias finally spoke. “She was choking.”

“Lightly. She’s durable.” the Greast Beast said as he raised a clawed finger.

There was a pause. The wind shifted, carrying the smell of smoke and blood from the trench line. The Adjutant seemed completely unbothered.

“I assume this is the part where you tell me to be grateful,” Ordias said.

The Adjutant grinned wider. “No. Gratitude’s not your thing. But maybe take a moment to admire the craftsmanship.”

Ordias didn’t move. “You sent an asset I can’t control into my command theatre without warning.”

“I sent a letter, well I admit it might have been vaguer than I should have been. But lets be honest…” the Great Beast said with a grin.

I could have been more specific

But where would be the fun in that?

◦◦,`°.✽✦✽.♚.✽✦✽.°`,◦◦

Minuvae staggered back into the clearing, she coughed as she held her throat. She could feel some kind of dark energy around her throat where that thing had grabbed her with its clawed arms.

She gagged for a moment as she tried to catch her breath.

“[Heal]…” Minuvae croaked as she cast a spell on her neck and the choking sensation faded momentarily before returning.

“Curse…” Minuvae croaked as she stumbled forward. She needed to get back to the forward camp before whatever this was spreads or worsens.

Her vision swam. A bitter taste clung to her tongue. Something curled tight beneath her skin, wound around her throat.

Branches scraped past. Mud clung to her boots. Ahead, the camp wards shimmered between the trunks. The curse pulsed. Her knees almost gave out. She grabbed a tree, steadying herself.

The perimeter glowed. She crossed it and collapsed, knees hitting the dirt as the wards flared. She heard raised voices as her body swayed, she couldn’t breathe.

She felt her body tilt as she was caught by someone, she heard someone shouting and then a warmth washed over her and her windpipe snapped back open. Minuvae took a rasping deep breathe as she started to gag. She coughed out a mouthful of black bile as tears streamed down her face. Minuvae felt like she was dry heaving as her body tried to expel whatever it was inside her.

Minuvae shook violently, every nerve burning. A healer knelt beside her. She felt a palm hover over her chest, magic crackling faintly.

“She’s stable. For now.”

Minuvae coughed once more, weakly. Her throat burned, raw and open. She blinked up at the blurred shapes circling overhead. She could taste iron and blood in her mouth as she gagged again and threw out a smaller gobule of the black tar.

“Fuck…” Minuvae gasped as her head finally cleared. She staggered to her feet and looked down at the mess she made on the ground. The grass was dying around the tar she threw up. The blades curled inward, black and yellow. The smell was worse. It smelled like a mix of burning hair, faeces, and rotting meat.

“What was that?” Minuvae rasped as she turned to face the healer.

“Not a curse, at least,” the healer replied, voice flat. “It seems to be some kind of magic that corroded your body. I suspect that might be bits of your throat and lungs rotting away. When I tried to cleanse it as a curse, nothing happened. I had to use a far more powerful healing spell to do anything.” the Healer said.

Minuvae wiped her mouth again, staring at the black smear on her sleeve.

“How much damage?”

The healer paused. “Too early to say. Some tissue loss. I stopped it spreading, but whatever that was, it was aggressive. Not meant to kill outright. It could be just something that exists around that creature. You should be fully healed; it doesn’t look malignant.”

Minuvae stayed quiet, her eyes fixed on the dead patch of ground.

Then she sensed movement, and it was the remains of the attack force. They were grimfaced and pale. The captain of the Grove Guard approached her and paused for a moment to glance at the pile of foul-smelling tar before looking back at her.

“Have you ever seen anything like that in your travels? I know you were an adventurer,” the captain said.

Minuvae shook her head slowly. Her throat was still raw, each word scraped out.

“No...” she croaked.

She spat to clear her mouth again, then added, quieter, “That was some unique brand of horror from the Great Beast’s hive.”

The captain didn’t respond at first. He just looked past her, toward the tree line.

“It didn’t move like the others,” he said finally. “Didn’t even seem like it was part of a unit.”

Minuvae followed his gaze but the thing was long gone from view.

“It wasn’t,” she said. “It acted alone.”

The captain’s brow furrowed. “It tore through our front line like paper. Shields meant nothing. Blades barely slowed it.”

Minuvae nodded slowly. “It was resistant to magic. Maybe not fully immune, but close. Whatever we cast, whether it was binding, flame, or frost, it barely noticed. The spells held for a second at most before falling apart.”

The captain clenched his jaw. “And those claws.”

Minuvae looked down at her arms, still faintly shaking. “They cut through enchanted steel. I saw it happen. One swing and the armor split like bark. No effort. No resistance.”

The captain was silent for a moment. “That wasn’t a soldier.”

“No,” she replied. “It was a weapon. Probably some horror dreamed up in the Great Beast’s mind…”

“We can’t keep doing this,” Minuvae said. “We need to sue for peace. How long until the Great Beast orders that thing to just come in here and start killing anything with pointed ears?”

The captain didn’t answer at first. His eyes were fixed on the treeline, jaw tight.

Finally, he gave a slow, reluctant nod.

“Soon,” he said. “If it wanted to, it could already be here.”

Minuvae looked at the dead patch of grass again, black and steaming where the tar still festered.

“We may not get another warning.” She turned back to him, voice low but steady. “We need to stop listening to the Elders. Their stubbornness will be the end of us.” The captain didn’t argue.

“You are suggesting rebellion. Technically I should arrest you for that.” the Captain stated.

Minuavae just offered her hands for the shackles with a raised brow. The captain looked at her hands, then at her face. He held her gaze for a long moment. The lines around his eyes were deeper than before, the skin under them dark from nights without sleep. Blood still clung to his armor. His gloves were torn, and there was a cut across his jaw that no one had even tried to heal.

“I’ve buried half my command,” he said finally, voice low. “The other half won’t sleep for weeks. I watched that thing tear through us like we were nothing. You think I have the energy left to put shackles on someone for saying what we’re all thinking?” He reached out and gently pushed her arms down.

The captain rubbed the side of his face, smearing dried blood across his cheek. He didn’t seem to notice.

“So what now?” she asked, watching him closely. “Are you with me or not?”

He didn’t answer immediately. His gaze drifted back to the treeline where the creature had disappeared. There was nothing there now. No movement. No sound. Just the quiet tension that refused to leave.

“I swore to protect the forest,” he said. “Not the Elders. Not their politics.”

He looked back at her. “I’m with you.”

Minuvae gave a single nod, her expression unreadable.

“Then we start planning. Quietly,” Minuvae said as she reached into her pack and pulled out a folded parchment. “But first, we recover and bury our dead.”

She handed it to the captain.

He frowned as he read it. The message was brief. Ordias had offered safe passage for the elves to retrieve and bury their fallen. A rare courtesy from a vampire.

“Can we trust him?” the captain asked.

“I think the Empire has been showing restraint,” Minuvae replied. “The fact that they can field something like that, and it’s not already here tearing through the camp, tells me they’re still open to talking.”

The captain looked at the message again, then gave a slow nod. He couldn’t refute that.

“All right,” he said. “We bury our dead. Then we talk.”

The elves returned to the battlefield at dusk.

They moved in silence, their faces drawn and hollow. Smoke still hung in the air, mixing with the copper stench of blood and the sour reek of ruptured flesh. The ground was littered with broken weapons and scorched armor. Patches of earth were blackened where fire or something worse had scorched through bodies and soil alike.

Some of the dead were found where they had fallen, their expressions frozen in pain or shock. Others were harder to retrieve. Torn apart beyond recognition, scattered in pieces across the field. Those were collected silently, wrapped in stained cloth or carried in sacks. No one spoke as they worked. There was only the sound of footsteps and the dull scrape of metal against stone.

The soldiers did not cry. They carried their fallen without ceremony, pulling them back toward the treeline where the forest roots ran deep. The dead would be buried there, under the old growth where the trees would remember their names even if no one else could.

Just as she was about to return to the forest, she sensed movement.

She turned slowly, her hand instinctively brushing the hilt of her blade. A group approached from the far side of the Imperial line. They were in dark uniforms and Imperial colors. At the front, walking with deliberate calm, was Ordias.

A delegation.

Her eyes narrowed as she saw what trailed behind him.

It was the creature.

It moved with that same unnatural stillness, neither cautious nor aggressive, just present. Its blood-soaked frame walked quietly behind Ordias like a cursed ghost, silent and unbothered, as if the slaughter it had caused belonged to someone else entirely.

The Grove Guard shifted uneasily. Hands hovered near weapons. Tension thickened the air.

She watched the thing closely, waiting for the smallest hint of movement. But it gave her nothing, no sign it recognized her at all.

Ordias stepped forward in his black and red plate armour, his black cloak billowing in the calm night wind.

“Have you considered my proposal? The Empress is of the stance she does not want war. This is a waste of resources, we have to deal with demons in the west, we do not want to waste soldiers here.” Ordias stated calmly.

His voice carried with practiced diplomacy. Measured. Neutral.

Behind him, the rest of the delegation remained still, their weapons sheathed, eyes scanning the treeline. Only the creature ignored everything around it, standing like a monument to the consequences of refusal.

Minuvae did not answer immediately. She studied Ordias, then looked once more at the thing behind him.

“You bring that here,” she said. “To speak of peace?”

Ordias did not flinch. He let out a small sigh of genuine frustration that surprised Minuvae.

“Do you really want me to let this thing out of my sight?” Ordias asked with a raised brow.

Minuvae glanced at the creature again. It hadn’t moved, it just stood there with blood dried across its limbs like ceremonial paint.

“If I could leave it in a vault somewhere, I would,” Ordias added. “But it doesn’t truly answer to anyone, at least not to me, if we’re being honest. Right now, it listens. That’s enough. For now.”

The captain stepped forward, his voice low and cautious.

“You expect us to believe you have control over it?” Ordias gave a short nod toward the creature. “It’s not attacking, is it?”

“Listen this… thing is called Crownless, I don’t know what that name is supposed to mean, which obviously makes this whole situation worse. I barely know anything about it, and it barely listens to me. All I know is this is some kind of new sick experiment from the Great Beast, I don’t know if this is the only one, there could be more. But I don’t know.” Ordias said, and Minuvae bit her lip for a moment before looking at the Captain. He looked away for a moment before nodding.

Minuvae turned to look at Ordias for a moment as she turned the idea over in her head.

Could we borrow some of your soldiers?