Mira and I walked into the Siren’s Rest, where there were a dozen or so sailors and longshoremen scattered about the place having a tankard of ale and relaxing after their labors. I didn’t see Bran or Elle yet, so I picked a table on the perimeter of the room and sat down. Mira sat next to me, and we ordered some bread and cheese. Mira and I were having some small talk while we waited, and I noticed that she didn’t actually eat all of the bread herself, so I assumed that Bandit was somewhere nearby even though I couldn’t see her. Mira had always had a good sense of humor, and I was really enjoying our conversation.

  Bran walked in with Elle about ten minutes later. They were both very tense, very quiet, and didn’t have even a hint of a smile on their faces. I could tell something was wrong with just a glance, so I was quiet as I waited for them to open up. It could be a personal argument, after all, so I didn’t want to pry. Bran noticed that I was regarding them both closely and cleared his throat.

  “There’s something about this place we didn’t know until now,” Bran said in low tones, getting right to the point. “There’s an ancient stone temple near the center of town that used to be dedicated to God. Now it’s divided in half, one side to a war and thunder god named Amagor, and the other side to Zepha, his fertility goddess consort.”

  Elle’s posture was rigid, and her face was hard. She couldn’t stay silent anymore and practically spat the next words out. “They sacrifice their children to Amagor!”

  Mira’s eyebrows shot up in surprise. “What?!”

  “They kill their children by throwing them alive onto a statue’s burning hot metal hands! They think that Amagor will bless their businesses with good luck because of their sacrifices. The priestesses of Zepha are all temple prostitutes, and the men of the city pay money to impregnate them to get blessings for their fields or families. It’s an abomination, and this must be what my dreams have been about lately.” Elle was angrier now than I had ever seen her. Her face was deep red, and I was pretty sure this was the first time I’d ever seen her frown.

  “If you could have heard the toddler’s screams…” Bran said with a troubled look. “Elle and I have to put a stop to this. It cannot stand,” Bran said through his clenched teeth. Bran was white-faced angry. It was that kind of pale complexion that people wear right before they unleash murderous violence. I could see why he felt that way, too. People sacrificing their own children in a horrible burning death was surely something that deserved capital punishment in my opinion. We couldn’t take on a whole crowd of people, though.

  “Do the priests and priestesses live at the temple?” I asked.

  “From what we could see,” Bran said, “they live in the cloistered part of the complex where the priests of old used to reside. I think they have twenty or thirty temple guards in total. I could only see around a dozen of them at one time, but they probably have twice that. The numbers don’t matter. I could feel the evil of that place. Every priest and priestess is steeped in it. This must be stopped,” Bran said firmly.

  That was it, then. Knowing the two of them the way I did, I knew better than to try to dissuade them. I really didn’t want to see some poor child thrown onto red-hot metal myself but doing something about it was a whole different thing. The locals put up with this monstrosity and may even promote it. How would the lord of this city feel about an attack on that temple, I wondered? In my heart, I knew that’s where this was headed. With Bran’s new holy sword, he could probably do it all by himself, too. I also wondered how they felt about Mordonian sorcerers hereabouts, too.

  “The priests may have some magical ability,” Mira said in low tones. “It would not do to underestimate them. We can’t take on the whole city, either. How about tonight when the crowds abate?” So, she knew violence was inevitable, too.

  “Agreed,” Bran said.

  “Perhaps some food?” I suggested. I waved at Bomar.

  Bran saw the wisdom of it, though he clearly wasn’t very hungry. We placed our order with Bomar for the house special tonight. We had baked fish and potatoes with green beans for dinner, and it was pretty good. While we ate, Mira gave them the good news about our travel plans.

  “Great news, guys!” Mira said, sarcastically trying to look overly cheerful. “Tomorrow morning we’ll be the new owners of a cog that currently doesn’t hold water! And it only cost us a thousand gold coins!”

  I had to laugh. Even Bran and Elle cracked a smile at that.

  “Sounds like a pretty expensive pile of firewood, Mira.” Bran said.

  “Yeah,” I said. “Speaking of expense, the provisions we needed cost me a hundred and twenty gold coins. I don’t suppose you guys would want to pitch in, would you?”

  “I suppose we have to, don’t we?” Bran said. “Glad I bought the less expensive scabbard. That weapons dealer was trying to sell me a scabbard with gold and jewels on it which he assured me was made from the hide of a legendary dragon or some such nonsense. No one’s even seen a dragon in centuries.”

  “I didn’t want to say it, but Vengeance deserves better than the plain scabbard you have now, Bran. It’s a soon to be legendary weapon, if it isn’t already,” I said.

  “You may have a point, but let’s see how much treasure the Pirate King collected and actually get home before we worry about uppity things like jeweled scabbards, all right?” Bran said dryly.

  We chatted for a while longer, then paid for our meal and retired to our rooms. We helped each other get into our armor, then waited for the sounds of pedestrian traffic to die down. While we waited, Bran knelt in prayer. This was a new side of him, and I tried not to stare, but I was bored and there was nothing else to do. After a time, he stood up, stretched out a little, put his helm and gauntlets on, and strapped on his shield. I did the same, and we punched each other in the shoulder pauldron for luck. It was something we picked up in Kurgh Rhamot, and it helped loosen us up a bit.

  The girls must have heard the shoulder punches, and they were standing ready when we knocked on their door. We locked up our rooms and made our way out of the inn. Conversation stopped in the common room on the way out, but no one got in our way. Bran led the way to the temple complex, and after walking through the city for fifteen minutes or so, I got my first look at it.

  The temple was built on a very large foundation that had steps along all four sides of it that led up to a plaza in front of the main building. The temple was built in a big horseshoe shape on the opposite side of the plaza. On the right was the main church building where worship was probably conducted. To the left of that building, in the center, was a huge statue of the top half of a stern looking man. His arms were outstretched with palms up over a big fire pit that was still burning. The hands looked like they were gauntleted, as they were clad in blackened iron, and I could see the heat coming off of them in waves. Around the statue further away from where crowds gathered in the plaza was a balcony reached by stairs which was where they must throw their helpless victims from. On the furthest side of the statue area was a smaller building that looked like it was living quarters for the priests cloistered there. Several of the prostitute priestesses were lounging at ease in front. They were wearing almost nothing at all, and what they were wearing was usually transparent. They were obviously there to drum up business from the local men.

  The sun had slipped below the horizon an hour or more ago, so the silver moon had begun shedding its dim light. The moon was a barely luminous counterbalance to the sun, always on exactly the other side of the world and never visible at the same time the sun was. We climbed the shadowed steps leading to the plaza side by side, with me on the left, then Mira, then Elle, and then Bran on the right side. Marching to the center of the plaza, striding together, we were very conspicuous. The priestesses had noticed us and turned their heads to see what we were up to.

  “Remember that area in the demon’s lair that the demon couldn’t enter?” Bran asked. “That’s a real thing, and it was generated by the sword. Stay close to me.” Bran drew Vengeance, which blazed with a pure, golden light in the gathering darkness of early evening. The priestesses drew back as soon as they saw it. Those that didn’t immediately run inside, that is.

  “Guard me as I pray,” Elle said. She stopped about thirty paces from the statue. Her sword was still scabbarded, and she put her shield on the ground, leaning it against the fronts of her legs. She held her head and arms high, and with a loud voice, she shouted, “Lord God, Your servant is here! You know of the atrocities being done here! Show Your mastery and Your anger over the abomination being committed in your temple!”

  People stopped and stared. By the time Elle finished saying that, her voice had become much louder than any human could shout. The light from the moon was becoming obscured as clouds began forming from nothing above the temple grounds. From a distance off, thunder rumbled. The priestesses took notice and shared a wide-eyed look amongst themselves. They seemed to huddle together for a moment for a brief conversation. While one went inside, the others began to advance towards us.

  “Who are you to invoke your false god in the face of Amagor?” one of them cried out.

  Elle didn’t answer. She kept her gaze to the heavens and shouted in a voice as loud as a thunderclap. “Lord God, show Your power over their false god of thunder! By Your will, stop the abominations being carried out in Your temple!” I didn’t know how, but her voice was magnified much louder than a normal person could shout. Everyone in and around the plaza could clearly hear her even over the diminishing city noise, the growing wind, and ominously rumbling thunder.

  Dark thunder clouds formed with supernatural speed and completely obscured the moon. The darkness and wind got more intense, and thunder boomed even louder. Guards started coming out of the larger building on the right. Seeing them, the priestesses started shouting for the guards to stop us. One of the priestesses threw up her hands and shouted for protection from Zepha with no visible effect. More priestesses and their patrons came out of the smaller building on the left in varying stages of undress. When the patrons looked up and saw the violence about to be unleashed from the heavens, they scampered off into the night with whatever they were wearing.

  “Lord God, show Your power over the abominations of the false gods Amagor and Zepha!” Elle shouted. Her voice echoed off the buildings, clearly audible to everyone in Seacrown. Standing close to her made my ears hurt.

  You could be reading stolen content. Head to Royal Road for the genuine story.

  The clouds thickened and spread across the sky. Thunder sounded and lightning flashed across the heavens in the gathering storm. The clouds above us swirled in a supernatural display as lightning flashed within. A group of men wearing bright blue robes with golden lightning bolts embroidered on them came hurriedly from the sanctuary on the right. They must have been priests, and they looked up nervously at the churning heavens. A dark-haired young man wearing white robes with golden lightning embroidery, obviously the high priest, ran out of the temple on the right along with more guards. Seeing that his whole contingent of guards was paying attention to the sky rather than doing anything, he shouted fiercely.

  “Kill them! Kill the heretics!” the high priest shouted, pointing at us.

  The guards seemed to snap out of it and began their charge. They had no armor, and their only weapons looked like wooden ritual clubs. Secretly, I was not impressed, even if there were more than a dozen of them against the four of us. The high priest began to shout for his god to rain death on us.

  Elle wasn’t done.

  “Lord God! Your will be done!” Elle shouted and clapped her hands together above her head.

  A thunderbolt from above suddenly flashed in incredible brightness from the sky and struck the incredulous priestesses. All of them were instantly reduced to a charred ruin except the ones closest to the temple. Simultaneously, a second thunderbolt flashed down and blasted through the guards charging us on the right, creating a pattern of burned flagstones in the shape of trees stretching horizontally away from the point of impact. The thunderbolts were so loud I could feel them through my cuirass, and involuntarily I knelt on one knee beside Mira, who did the same. Another thunderbolt came down from the heavens above and struck the statue with the force of a battering ram. The head of the statue exploded into fragments. As the remaining priests, guards, and priestesses cowered, thunderbolt after thunderbolt came down until the statue was completely obliterated. Its cruel gauntlets were melted into a white-hot heap of formless metal. Seeing this, the high priest of Amagor shouted his rage at us with an upraised fist, then ran into the temple with the survivors. Seeing their leader flee, the priestesses who remained close to their side of the temple also fled inside. Thunder continued to rumble in deafening peals, and lightning flashed across the sky, lighting our surroundings.

  Elle finally lowered her armored arms and picked up her shield. She drew her sword and turned towards the tallest part of the temple where the high priest had fled. I focused my will and drew enough power to activate my shielding spell around us as we advanced. When we reached the temple doors, we found them slightly ajar.

  Bran prayed, “Lord, please strengthen Your servants for this battle.”

  Through the visor of his helm, the sword under his forehead brightened, and then his whole body was encompassed in a soft, golden aura. Beams of light from that aura sprung out to touch Elle, Mira and myself, and I could feel the sudden surge of vigor hit me. It was warm, and it was a little shocking, and suddenly my movements were a lot quicker. Bran hefted his shield higher and kicked the heavy doors open with great force, letting the hellish light emanate from the interior.

  Inside, the temple consisted of a single very large sanctuary with two rows of columns running away from the doors towards an altar that was shaped like a lightning bolt. The whole place was lit with low firelight from braziers standing in front of each pillar, which gave the place a sinister atmosphere. Something sour was burning in the braziers that made my nose itch. There was true evil residing in this building, and I could almost feel it myself. I’d be lying if I said I wasn’t afraid. I was. We all were. But we stepped inside to do battle anyway.

  “Loose!” a commander of the guards shouted.

  There were eight guards before the altar, and they fired a volley of crossbow bolts at us that reflected off of my shield spell. They looked surprised, then started franticly reloading their crossbows. Four lesser priests and the high priest himself were standing in a small circle behind the altar, and they were chanting something in unison. We began advancing quickly across the room, careful to keep our shields up and stay close to Bran. The chanting of the priests ended in a crescendo, and a blast of lightning suddenly sprang out of the altar and hit some sort of shielding aura that Vengeance projected, erupting harmlessly in a spray of sparks. By that time, the guards had reloaded and raised their crossbows to fire. My shielding spell held strong, and the crossbow bolts ricocheted feebly away. Through it all, the four of us kept up our measured advance, just as we’d learned.

  “Clubs!” the commander shouted. The guards dropped their crossbows and drew their ceremonial clubs. By the looks on their faces, I’d bet they wished they had anything other than clubs. The priests began chanting again.

  “Steady,” Bran said calmly, keeping his pace in our advance. We were halfway there.

  Just then, a set of doors boomed open on the left side of the sanctuary, vomiting forth a large group of quadrupedal things resembling scaled wolves. They were thickly muscled and gave off deep throated growls as they saw us and veered straight at us. They were almost big enough for an armored man to ride and would make short work of us if we let them.

  “The hounds of Amagor!” one of the guards shouted joyfully.

  “Get them!” the commander yelled, pointing at us. The guards charged with shouted war cries of “Amagor!”

  Seeing the doom coming our way, I filled myself with as much power as I could take from the source, no matter how badly it hurt, then held my mace forward and let loose with a blast of concussive force. It caught them all by surprise and blasted everything backwards in a wave that ended at an invisible shield of some kind before the altar. The blast hurled everything back like it was kicked by a horse, and their war cries became cries of pain. I summoned more magic and channeled it into the greatest gout of fire I had ever created. The flames rolled over the leftmost half of the cultists and hounds and burned them fiercely. Cries became shrieks within the inferno. The other half of our adversaries were gaining their feet swiftly, so I raked the flames across them, hoping to kill as many as possible before they could engage us again. The guards collapsed in charred heaps, but the hounds leapt this way and that with preternatural quickness to escape the flames.

  The hounds began sprouting extra arms, tentacles, and even a few extra heads as they charged us, now coming from a wide arc in front of us. They were Xerith! I swept the flames back to the left through as many of them as I could catch, then I felt something big crash into my shield, knocking me back a half step. Had it not been for the strength Bran prayed for, I’d have been knocked across the room with a beast at my throat. As it was, we all kept our feet and our formation, and we struck back with everything we had. It was pure chaos. I channeled fire into my mace and struck anything that came into my view. Reflexively, all four of us had been turned from our line into a tiny circle. The Xerith hammered and slashed away at us, but our strength didn’t flag, and our armor held up against the worst of their blows. One by one, we struck them down, and because we knew to cleave their dark cores, they stayed down.

  “Look!” Mira shouted.

  Mira was facing the altar, so she had seen the danger first. The priests had been chanting as we fought, and they looked to be coming to a climax. The altar was aglow with flame, and that flame was gathering into a sphere above it. After trading another couple of blows, I saw the sphere had flattened into a vertical circle around thirty feet in diameter with an area of fiery darkness in the middle of it. I could swear I heard a roar coming from that circle just then.

  “They’re summoning something!” I shouted over the din.

  “I got it!” Mira shouted. “Gimme some space!”

  Mira was fighting to my right, and she had two of the Xerith attacking her. I summoned the power I needed and punched towards her opponents with my weapon hand, knocking the two Xerith back a dozen paces. Unfortunately, I also grazed Mira with that attack, and she spun to her right, completely around once, then used her momentum to run right out of our little defensive circle, away from the altar and towards the closest column. What was she up to? I turned my attention fully to the Xerith in front of me and closed the circle off so Bran wouldn’t get hit from behind. Mira ducked behind the pillar with a Xerith right behind her, then suddenly appeared across the room, behind the high priest. She must have used his own shadow to suddenly travel into. She then promptly ran him through with her shortsword. He screamed something inarticulate through another two mouths he suddenly sprouted, then collapsed in death, his limbs still writhing.

  The darkness within the portal they were conjuring collapsed on itself without the high priest’s direction, and the fire the portal was made of rose into the air and blew out, much like normal fire would. That, of course, left Mira standing alone before four angry priests, who immediately began shifting into other forms. Mira shouted a bad word, turned and ran, wrapping darkness around herself as she did so. That shadow suddenly disappeared in a darker area of the room with four Xerith in close pursuit.

  Despite our divine strength and heavy armor, we were all getting beaten down slowly but surely. I had taken a couple of particularly strong hits to my left shoulder, and I was slow to block. Elle must have been hurting as well, because she raised her voice above the battle. “God, please lay Your healing hand on us!” Immediately a pulse of light flashed outwards from her, healing our wounds and causing the Xerith quite a bit of distress, judging from their shrieks.

  Bran was killing Xerith with radiant blows from Vengeance more quickly now, and he turned to help Elle. Mira was flitting around the room from shadow to shadow, always ahead of the Xerith chasing her, suddenly striking from behind when they didn’t expect it. I, on the other hand, found myself fighting several of them at once. They hated me more than the others for some reason, and they crowded each other trying to get at me. I blocked, parried, and struck out the best I could, but I was weakening fast. The Xerith were quick as cats, and I had a hard time landing solid blows. When Bran killed all the ones facing Elle, both of them turned to help me, and suddenly our defensive circle was an offensive one, closing in around the flailing Xerith. They fought like demons, but within another minute Bran had cloven the last one in two, and the three of us cast about, looking for Mira.

  Mira strode towards us from a column, the shadows melting off of her as she came, already cleaning the dark ichor from her blade with that handy spell she used. “Are you finished yet?”

  “Almost,” Elle said, turning a frown on the altar. She raised her eyes up and pointed towards the altar with her sword. “Lord, please erase that idol from this world.” A pillar of fire roared down from near the ceiling and covered the altar. When the fires blew out a few moments later, there was nothing left of the altar but melted metal and cracked floor tiles. “Now I’m finished.”

  Bran nodded in satisfaction, scanning around in a slow circle. “I don’t feel the presence of any more evil here. I think we’re done.”

  Without having to be asked, I began using my magic to repair our armor. It was in pretty sorry shape, too, but it had done its job. Mira cleaned us up, and we took a moment to get our breath and to come to terms with what had just happened.

  “All the gold’s melted,” Mira said sadly.

  “I could melt it again, and maybe we can smelt it into ingots if your ladyship desires it,” I said mockingly.

  “Even I don’t want anything to do with that,” Mira said, pointing at the former altar.

  “I don’t think we have the time, anyway,” Bran said. “The lord of this place is going to send men here soon enough. They might be decent people, and I don’t want to fight good people. I think we should get out of here while the getting’s good.”

  “I’ll second that,” I said.

  We were all exhausted, victorious or not, and none of us wanted to fight our way through the local lord’s army. We had done a good thing here today, and it was time to leave. We left the piles of charred guards and the misshapen forms of the Xerith for the local lord to find. Maybe he’d think twice about letting a cult like this operate under his nose again. Then again, maybe the local lord liked having these kinds of things happen in his city. We didn’t know. Nor did we know how the locals would take it. We could have ended up having to flee the city with an angry mob behind us. If there was one thing I learned from my experience with Sivash Surekeel’s cult, it was that people liked their sin. No matter how depraved it was, people got accustomed to sin, and their morals shrink to nothing because of it. No, you can’t talk a person out of the evil they do. God would have to sort it out this time.

  We turned and left. The lightning illuminated our way through the rain. The city was completely silent except for the sound of rumbling thunder, like a promise of divine retribution. There was no one in the street, and only a few had the courage to even peek through their shutters. The people of Seacrown didn’t see us coming, but they surely saw us leave.