Chapter 77: The Usurper's Threshold
Echoes of the Fallen
Wood's golden leaf glinted in Bennett's palm as the trio ventured deeper into the gorge. The ancient treant's parting words lingered like frost on their minds:
"Twenty winters past… others came. Warriors… mages… all dust now."
Bennett recalled the map in his satchel—the one gifted by Captain Beinrich, its faded lines drawn by the sole survivor of that doomed expedition. Twenty years, he mused. The same year Duke Valen's rebellion collapsed. Coincidence?
Hussein strode ahead, his cloak billowing like a storm cloud. "This Tyrant's arrogance reeks. Carving laws into stone? Even dragons don't tax eyes."
Dadaniel snorted. "Better than gold. Easier to collect."
Their banter died as the fog thinned, revealing the gorge's true face.
The Tyrant's Welcome
The air grew thick with contradictions—warmth clashing with the forest's eternal chill, life sprouting amidst decay.
Fog's Veil: A magically sustained barrier, its damp tendrils clinging like spectral hands. Bennett's fire spell had failed to pierce it, confirming dark arts at play.
Thermal Anomaly: The ground radiated unnatural heat. By the third bend, snow gave way to mud, then to cracked earth veined with luminescent moss.
Silent Witnesses: Rotting tree carcasses lined the path, their roots coiled around rusted helms and yellowed bones.
"This heat…" Bennett knelt, sifting warm soil. "Not geothermal. Alchemical. Smell that sulfur?"
Hussein's sword hissed from its sheath. "Blood magic. The Tyrant's cooked this valley like a cauldron."
A Stone's Prophecy
The obelisk loomed—a jagged slate etched with jagged runes:
BY DECREE OF THE EYE THAT SEES ALL
Let no creature—beast, tree, or man—pass without tribute.
One eye per soul, offered fresh and bleeding.
Defiance earns death. Compliance… mercy.
Dadaniel traced the letters. "Charming host. Shall we leave a tip?"
Bennett's laughter died abruptly. Behind the stone, the gorge yawned into a cavernous expanse. Pillars of fused bone—human femurs interlaced with petrified roots—framed a path leading upward. At its zenith, perched atop a ziggurat of skulls, glowed a single golden eye the size of a cartwheel.
"Ah," Hussein said dryly. "There's our welcoming committee."
The Price of Passage
Warmth became sweltering heat as they climbed. The air reeked of charred flesh and myrrh—incense masking rot.
Hussein froze. "Look."
Embedded in the bone-path were hundreds of ocular sockets, each housing a glassy orb: wolf eyes milky with age, treant saplings shriveled to walnut size, even a cluster of human irises still vivid with terror.
"Trophies," Bennett whispered. "It's been collecting."
A rasp echoed from above—the sound of stone grinding against stone. The golden eye blinked.
"Trespassers." The voice vibrated through their ribs. "Choose: tribute… or tribute taken."
Hussein raised his blade. "I'll donate your cornea to a beggar."
Wood's Gift
Chaos erupted.
The ziggurat shuddered as skeletal sentinels clawed free—half-tree, half-corpse abominations. Dadaniel's arrows found their hollow eye sockets, but for every one felled, three more sprouted.
"The leaf!" Dadaniel roared. "Use Wood's gift!"
Bennett slammed the golden foliage into the earth. Roots erupted, weaving a thorned barrier around them.
"Temporary!" Bennett shouted. "Run!"
They fled upward, the Tyrant's laughter shaking loose boulders.
The Spring's Secret
At the summit, Bennett's breath caught.
The fabled Life Spring bubbled at the ziggurat's heart—but its waters ran black. Above it floated the Tyrant's true form: a pulsing orb veined with crimson, its single eye leering from within a cage of Aragorn's own crest.
"A lie," Hussein breathed. "The Spring's no prize. It's feeding it."
Bennett understood now. The "Tyrant" wasn't some alien invader.
It was Aragorn's sin made flesh—a guardian corrupted into a parasite.
Chapter 78: The Tyrant's Dominion
A Kingdom of Absurdity
Bennett stared at the crude stone slab engraved with jagged runes. The proclamation was laughably grandiose:
By Decree of His All-Seeing Majesty, the Eye Tyrant
All trespassers shall pay tribute: one eye per soul. Refusal constitutes treason.
"This… creature has founded a kingdom here?" Bennett muttered. "An empire of beasts and madness?"
Hussein's blade sang. With a single stroke, the slab split cleanly, its halves crashing to the ground. "Kings demand fealty," the knight sneered, golden light flickering in his pupils. "Let's educate this monarch on true power."
Crows cawed overhead. Three black shapes perched on a withered oak, their beaks snapping. One screeched in a nasal human voice: "Intruders! Alert the court!"
Before Bennett could react, Hussein kicked two stones skyward. Thwack. Thwack. Feathers exploded like macabre fireworks. The third crow fled, its warning cries echoing through the gorge.
"Why leave a messenger?" Bennett groaned. "Now they'll prepare defenses!"
Hussein strode forward, unflinching. "Let them tremble. Their fear will taste sweeter."
Secrets and Shadows
Dadaniel tugged Bennett's sleeve. From his pack emerged three obsidian lenses set in gold frames—a scholar's treasure wrapped in deerskin.
"Smoked quartz," Dadaniel explained. "Forged to neutralize petrifying gazes. Our family spent fortunes replicating ancient texts."
Bennett blinked. These look like… sunglasses?
"Eight thousand gold per pair," Dadaniel added solemnly. "For the basilisk's curse. But perhaps…" He glanced toward the gorge's heart. "…they'll dull the Tyrant's stare too."
Gratitude warred with guilt in Bennett's chest. He's risking everything for me—while I lied about my name.
"Dadaniel," Bennett began, voice thick. "My true identity—"
The huntsman silenced him with an embrace. "You're the fool who charged a blood-crazed knight to save a stranger. Names are wind. Loyalty is stone."
Court of the Grotesque
The gorge widened into a nightmare parody of civilization:
Slave Walls: Half-built ramparts of quarried stone, manned by petrified treants. Their rocky limbs creaked under burdens no living tree should bear.
Rodent Overlords: Waist-high ratfolk in stitched hides cracked whips glowing with venomous magic. Each lash left smoking welts on stone flesh.
Cavalry Farce: A dozen armored rat knights astride giant sloths—their "steeds" drooling and slow, yet draped in embroidered caparisons depicting a golden eye.
"Halt, worms!" The rat captain brandished a spear tipped with jagged crystal. "Kneel before His Omniscience's tax collectors!"
Bennett bit his cheek to stifle laughter. "We seek audience with your… illustrious sovereign."
"Audience?" The rat sneered. "Only eyeless corpses meet the Tyrant! Now gouge—"
Hussein's blade flickered. The captain's head rolled, its final expression frozen in comical surprise.
Puppets and Power
Beyond the walls sprawled a petrified forest—oaks and pines turned to skeletal sentinels. Stone cottages lined the path, their hollow windows teeming with skittering shadows.
"The Tyrant's subjects," Dadaniel whispered. "Flesh-and-blood vermin ruling over stone slaves."
Hussein paused by a shack. Inside, a family of mole-people cowered, their claws covering bulbous eyes. "Not enemies. Prisoners."
Bennett knelt, brushing dust from a petrified sapling. The treant's face—forever twisted in agony—stared blindly upward. "This 'kingdom' is a wound. Let's cauterize it."
Chapter 79: The Vermin Viceroy's Gambit
A Parade of Absurdity
The cobblestone street trembled under the rhythmic clatter of iron boots. From the fog-shrouded alleys surged an army of rodent soldiers—their mismatched armor clanking, crude spears glinting with rust and malice. Bennett stifled a laugh. The scene was so ludicrous it bordered on theater: a battalion of waist-high rats marching in formation, their whiskers twitching beneath oversized helmets.
Hussein's hand drifted toward his sword hilt, but Bennett gripped his arm. "Wait. Let's see what farce they've rehearsed."
The rats parted with a synchronized stomp. Eight burly rodents hauled a stone slab into view, their squeaks harmonizing into a grotesque parody of a royal fanfare. Upon this makeshift throne sat a creature so obese its gray fur strained against rolls of blubber. A conical hat perched precariously on its head, its white robe straining at the seams.
"Humans!" The rat's voice cracked with excitement. "You're… you're REAL humans!"
Bennett sketched an exaggerated bow. "At your service, Lord…?"
"Grand Vizier of His All-Seeing Majesty's Glorious Dominion!" The rat puffed out its chest, nearly toppling off the slab. "Kneel, worms!"
"Apologies," Bennett said, grinning. "We don't kneel to rodents."
The vizier's beady eyes narrowed. With a flick of its claws, it barked a guttural incantation.
Flames and Farce
Magic surged—raw and acrid. Fire erupted from the cobblestones, encircling the trio in a roaring vortex.
"Binding!" The vizier shrieked.
Bennett's limbs locked mid-gesture. "Bloody hell—it is a mage!"
Hussein snorted. Golden light flared around him as he shattered the spell with a shrug. "Pathetic."
Arrows rained from rooftops—crude wooden shafts tipped with jagged flint. The knight's blade became a whirlwind, deflecting the barrage with contemptuous ease.
"Kill them!" The vizier's shrill command sent the firestorm contracting.
Bennett spat a counterspell. Frost blossomed from his sleeves, battling the flames in a hissing duel of elements. "Dadaniel! The big ones!"
Three mutated rats lunged through the smoke—muscles grotesquely swollen, eyes bleeding crimson. Dadaniel's arrows thudded into their flesh to no effect.
"Berserkers!" Bennett ducked a claw swipe. "Break the vizier's focus!"
Hussein vanished. One heartbeat he stood beside Bennett; the next, his blood-smeared gauntlet closed around the vizier's throat.
"Squeal louder," he purred. "Your underlings might hear."
Revelation in Rot
Chaos erupted. Rat soldiers scattered like leaves, their courage evaporating with their leader's capture. Bennett leaned against a wall, clutching a bleeding calf. "Ugh. Hope these bastards don't carry plague…"
The vizier dangled from Hussein's grip, squeaking: "Mercy! Mercy! I'll serve! I'll—"
"Three seconds," Bennett growled. "One—"
"I'm human—or was!" The rat's voice cracked with desperation. "A mage! Cursed by the Tyrant!"
Silence fell.
Bennett stared. Beneath the matted fur and twitching nose, he glimpsed it—a flicker of human terror in those beady eyes.
"Explain." Hussein's blade pressed against the vizier's jugular. "Or die slowly."
The Tyrant's Curse
The vizier's tale spilled out between gasps:
Twenty years prior, he'd been Aldrich Vorn—a middling fire mage in the doomed expedition. Captured by the Tyrant, he'd been transformed into this pitiful shape, forced to oversee its "kingdom" of enslaved vermin.
"The Tyrant feeds on defiance," Aldrich whimpered. "Those who resist become… tools. Or decorations." He gestured to petrified figures embedded in the walls—former comrades frozen mid-scream.
Dadaniel spat. "And you chose collaboration?"
"Choice?" The rat-mage laughed bitterly. "You think I wanted to command fleas and lick the boots of a sentient eyeball?"
Bennett's stomach churned. "Where is it? The Tyrant."
Aldrich's paw trembled as he pointed upward. Through a crack in the cavern roof, moonlight glinted on something vast and pulsating—an orb veined with crimson, watching.
"The throne room," he whispered. "Where it floats above the Spring… feeding."
Paths of Penance
Hussein dropped the vizier. "Lead us. Redeem your cowardice."
"I'd rather die!" Aldrich scrambled backward. "You don't understand—it sees everything! Controls everything!"
Bennett knelt, eye-level with the quivering creature. "Help us kill it, and I'll reverse the curse."
A spark of hope ignited in the rat's gaze—then died. "Impossible. The Spring's corruption is—"
"Try me." Bennett's smile held winter's edge. "Or would you prefer Hussein's version of persuasion?"
The vizier's whiskers drooped. "...Follow the bone road. But don't say I didn't warn you."
As they marched into the gloom, Aldrich's final whisper trailed them: "When you see its true form… pray you have the stomach to strike."